Mule Deer Pequop Herd

The Area 7 mule deer population is one of the state’s largest deer herds with an estimated population of about 11,000 in 2019. This deer herd is highly important to Nevada from an economic and ecological perspective. It’s one of the longest distance deer migrations in the state of Nevada with some animals known to migrate over 120 miles during a single migration. A subset of this population, known as the “Pequop” herd, crosses a major highway (US highway 93) and an interstate (Interstate-80) twice annually during their seasonal migration. Several million dollars in wildlife crossing structures have been constructed to help these deer during their migration, yet they still face challenges to connectivity between winter and summer ranges including miles of livestock fencing and a large-scale gold mine operation in close proximity a large stop-over site near Long Canyon. This layer's data were collected as part of a project conducted between 2011 and 2017. This dataset was derived from three separate datasets for the Pequop herd obtained via ScienceBase: Winter Range, Stopovers, and Corridors. Due to the need to merge these datasets for visualization purposes, several fields were standardized to account for discrepancies among the source datasets. For example, the original corridor and winter range datasets both include a field named “GRIDCODE,” while the stopover dataset contained a single attribute field named “layer” with a value of 1. The corridor dataset also included an additional field not present in the other two datasets named “details.” For consistency, the “GRIDCODE” field and its associated values were preserved for the corridor and winter range datasets and assigned null values for stopover features. The “details” field was also retained and assigned null values for both stopover and winter range features. The “layer” field from the stopover dataset was removed. For consistency and clarity with other mule deer datasets, four additional fields were added: “Species,” “Herd,” “Use,” and “DataType.” The “Use” field was added to provide an associated use level corresponding to “GRIDCODE” values for easier interpretation and map symbolization. The associated use values are low, medium, high, winter range, and stopover. The “DataType” field represents the type of feature, with values of corridor, stopover, and winter range. Attributes (not all field definitions may be listed): ────────┬───┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── GRIDCODE│ │We delineated low, medium and high-level corridors from population level utilization distributions of animal movements. ────────┼───┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │0.3│Percent of the winter range of the population. ────────┼───┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │1 │This value represents the "low use" corridor or the 99% level population footprint of the combined animal utilization distributions. ────────┼───┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │10 │This value represents the "medium use" corridor or the combined animal utilization distributions for 10% or more of the population. ────────┼───┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │20 │This value represents the "high use" corridor or the combined animal utilization distributions for 20% or more of the population. ────────┴───┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────