Regional Wildlife Habitat

Interactive Management Model

By

Joe De Gooyer & Eric B. Swartz

The following is a model for an interactive management tool for use by wildlife habitat managers. This model contains only one interactive area, whereas the real tool would contain as many as neccessary.

Figure 1.

The Interactive Management Model is based on the area shown. This area is the Tony Grove Northeast quadrangle. The Remote Sensed data was obtained using SPOT 10 meter resolution data set.

Figure 2.

This Management Technique is modeled as a supplemental information system for specific areas of management. This specific model is based on a high use back country road in Logan Canyon. The area of management is encompused by a one half mile buffer zone centered around the road.

This area was chosen as a model for managing diverse habitat. The model contains information for the management of Big Game, Song Bird and Lek Species.

To assess the accuracy of the data and SPOT image, in-situ data is used. This is often found to be excesive, but this management model was not dened to remove the manager from the management area. More so, it was designed so that managers may better understand, and know their management area.

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Figure 3.

This area denotes specific regions of critical Big Game Habitat. These polygons are loose representations of boundries based on, regional vegetation and foreging habits of Big Game species in the management area.

Figure 4.

This area is shaded by regional Song Bird habitat. Migrating species can challenge a managers understanding and inventory of managed lands.

The document author has the option to designate and define areas based on the managers detailed critria. This allows for better regional management, greater understanding of and accounting for the species inventory within the management area.

Figure 5.

This map of Lek species offers an example of a managers option to customize management areas. As shown, larger polygons of shading show regional habitat for Lek species. Smaller sections, or points of shading represent specific Leks that are known to exist.

Figure 6.

This image represents the entire area of management, accounting for all of the designated habitats and species within the area of concern. This would be the interactive map.

Figure 7.

When the Manager wants more information about a specific polygon, they simply click on that area. Specific information is presented via a hotlink. Another hotlink icon will allow the manager to return to the main map. This is one of the Big Game polygons.

  • Site specific Information

    The complexity involved in activating the polygons as hotlinks is demanding, and the time than could be alloted. By clicking on the Words "Site Specific Information", you, as the user, can experience our model's example of Interactive Management.

    Methodology and Abstract of the Project

    This project is a simple representation of the actual interactive Management Model. It is designed to show how an interactive model can save a resource manager time and effort in gaining information on specific sites within the management area.

    The writing of an interactive model is actually not hard, once the specific information is compiled. A thorough working knowledge of Arcview, Netscape and HTML language will simplify the writing of a working Interactive Management Model.

    The project progressed as follows.

    1. Ten meter data was imported, to Arcview from Dr. R. Doug Ramsey.

    2. The Tony Grove, NorthEast, 7.5 meter quadrangle was decided on as the study area. The reason we chose this quad was for its variety of habitats.

    3. The dirt road was chosen as the center of the management area. From the road, a 1/2 mile buffer zone was used to establish the area boundry.

    4. Using applications in Arcview, data was classified as specific habitats using the following criteria: forage, cover type and topography.

    5. The area was extensively Field-truthed to assess our classificartion accurracy.

    6. Having imported the data into Arcview, we specified habitats and outlined them with polygons.

    7. We then began to write our Html using a data-base of Tony N.E. GIF's, created in Arcview using the XV program.

    8. Additional GIF's were added using the World Wide Web as a source.

    9. The Hot Link was then added to our HTML. We were unable to figure out how to make the actual polygon become the Hotlink icon. It is possible, and would have to be done to make this Management Map as interactive as possible. Unfortunately, time constraints restricted us to a more conventional Hotlink.

    10. Finally, we made our last ammendments to the HTML, and here it is!