Mule Deer Loyalton Herd

The Loyalton mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) herd winters west and northwest of Reno, Nevada along the California-Nevada border, extending into the Peterson Mountains, east of Highway 395 in Nevada. A portion of the herd also winters north of I-80 on Peavine Mountain in Nevada. This population represents an interstate migratory herd but also contains year-round residents in both states. Significant challenges include urban development, vehicle collisions on Highways 89, 395, and I80, and large-scale wildfires that have burned winter ranges in both states. Three Highway 89 wildlife crossing structures were installed by California Department of Transportation and the Highway 89 Stewardship Team at Kyburz Flats and two at Sagehen Summit to mitigate impacts from vehicle collisions. This layer's data were collected as part of a project conducted between 2006 and 2017. This dataset was derived from three separate datasets for the Loyalton 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 two additional fields not present in the other two datasets named “ID” and “Use.” 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 “Use” field was also retained and assigned values of “stopover” and “winter range” for the stopover and winter range features, respectively. The “layer” field from the stopover dataset was removed, and the “ID” field from the corridor dataset was also removed. For consistency and clarity with other mule deer datasets, three additional fields were added: “Species,” “Herd,” and “DataType.” 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. ────────┼───┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │0.5│Population level contours of winter ranges. 50% of wintering 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 (>10% of sample population) ────────┼───┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │20 │This value represents the "high use" corridor (>20% of sample population) ────────┴───┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────