Effects of environmental and anthropogenic landscape features on mule deer harvest in Nebraska
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Coupled Natural and Human Systems, Natural Resource Management
- Keywords
- mule deer, hunting, NDVI, roads, Nebraska, forest, riparian, terrain roughness
- Copyright
- © 2018 O'Connor et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Effects of environmental and anthropogenic landscape features on mule deer harvest in Nebraska. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26611v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26611v1
Abstract
Understanding the habitat use of wildlife species is important for effective management. Nebraska has a variety of habitat types, with the majority being covered by rangeland and cropland. These habitat types likely influence the harvest of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in Nebraska, but their specific effects are unknown. We modeled which environmental and anthropogenic landscape features influenced harvest densities. Spatial analysis in a Geographic Information System was used to determine the mean values of environmental and anthropogenic landscape features at the county level. We then used a generalized linear model to determine which of those factors influenced mule deer harvest from 2014-2016. We found that forest habitat, riparian habitat, road density, time integrated NDVI, and terrain roughness influence mule deer harvest in Nebraska. According to our model, mule deer show a significant preference for less forested, more rugged terrain (often rangelands), that are less fragmented and developed, based on harvest density. Understanding increased harvest densities of mule deer in rangeland habitats with increased roughness, decreased road density, and decreased urbanization can be beneficial for wildlife managers, allowing for more efficient allocation of efforts and expenses by managers for population management.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.