MAPPING HABITAT QUALITY IN CONSERVATION’S NEGLECTED GEOGRAPHY Ian Breckheimer A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology. Chapel Hill 2012 Approved by: Aaron Moody Conghe Song Peter White ©2012 Ian Breckheimer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT IAN BRECKHEIMER: Mapping Habitat Quality in Conservation’s Neglected Geography (Under the direction of Aaron Moody) This thesis describes conceptual and methodological work that aims to advance the science of modeling and mapping wildlife habitat in human-modified landscapes. First, I review how researchers have defined and measured the quality of wildlife habitat over the past four decades. I then demonstrate a new approach to quantifying habitat quality by modeling habitat for the federally endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker (Picoides borealis, RCW) across the Onslow Bight, a one million hectare region of North Carolina’s coastal plain. Next, I describe the development and operation of a GIS toolbox for ArcGIS 9.3, called “Connect”, designed to help conservation practitioners incorporate habitat connectivity considerations into land management and land-use planning. In two stakeholder-driven case studies, I use Connect to prioritize private land parcels for connectivity conservation in fragmented habitats around Fort Bragg, NC, and evaluate the effectiveness of a proposed corridor in promoting dispersal for RCW in the face of urban development. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank John Lay, Alexa J. McKerrow, Cecil Frost, Matt Simon, Jennifer Costanza, Jeff Walters, Anne Trainor, Will Fields, Nick Haddad, R. Todd Jobe, Janet Pearson, Ryan Elting, Adam Terrando, Curtis Beleya, the staff of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the staff of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, the staff of the U.S. Forest Service and the staff of US Army Fort Bragg for providing data that contributed to this effort. Matt Simon, Jennifer Costanza, Anne Trainor, Austin Milt, Naomi Schwartz, Amanda Chunco, Douglas J. Bruggeman, and Aaron Moody all provided invaluable support and feedback on the manuscript at various stages. Austin Milt provided programming support for the development of the software described in this thesis. Much of this work was financially supported by grants from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SI-1656 and RC-1471). iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I—MEASURING HABITAT QUALITY IN THE NEGLECTED GEOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 2 The Neglected Geography of Conservation ................................................................................ 2 Habitat Quality - A Conceptual Overview .................................................................................. 5 Theory Meets Practice .................................................................................................................. 12 Defining Habitat Quality for the Neglected Geography ......................................................... 19 Works Cited in Chapter I ............................................................................................................. 26 CHAPTER II—MODELING RED-COCKADED WOODPECKER (PICOIDES BOREALIS) HABITAT QUALITY AT HIGH RESOLUTION AND LARGE EXTENTS USING LIDAR ................................................... 34 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 30 Methods .......................................................................................................................................... 39 Study Area .................................................................................................................................. 39 Field Data ................................................................................................................................... 40 Remotely-sensed Data .............................................................................................................. 41 Habitat Standards ...................................................................................................................... 43 Modeling prevalence ................................................................................................................. 44 Modeling fitness ........................................................................................................................ 46 Results ............................................................................................................................................. 50 LiDAR data validation.............................................................................................................. 50 v Prevalence model ...................................................................................................................... 51 Fitness model ............................................................................................................................. 53 Discussion ....................................................................................................................................... 57 Works Cited In Chapter II ........................................................................................................... 62 CHAPTER III—THE CONNECT TOOLBOX: GIS TOOLS SUPPORTING LANDSCAPE CONNECTIVITY FOR WILDLIFE ................................... 67 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 67 Quantifying connectivity .............................................................................................................. 68 Toolbox Description ..................................................................................................................... 71 Overall Structure ....................................................................................................................... 71 Create Connectivity Model ...................................................................................................... 72 Prioritize Landscape Features ................................................................................................. 74 Generate Landscape Network ................................................................................................ 75 Case Study Application ................................................................................................................. 77 Study Area: Spring Lake, NC .................................................................................................. 77 Focal species .............................................................................................................................. 79 Management Question 1: Where is the best connectivity bang for the buck? ................. 80 Management Question 2: Will a corridor be enough? ......................................................... 86 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 93 Works Cited in Chapter III .......................................................................................................... 96 APPENDIX A—EMPIRICAL PAPERS REVIEWED IN TABLE 1 ................................. 100 vi LIST OF TABLES 1. Metrics of habitat quality used in empirical papers on ‘habitat quality’ or ‘patch quality’ published between 1983 and 2010 ......................................................... 13 2. Vegetation structural criteria for the USFWS “recovery standard” and “managed stability standard” from USFWS (2003) along with corresponding conditions used to select forested plots on Camp Lejeune. .................................................................................................................................... 44 3. Parameters incorporated into regressions of RCW group size ........................................ 48 4. Habitat types on conserved and non-conserved lands in the Onslow Bight derived from remotely sensed data ............................................................................ 51 5. Percentage of habitat types within 800m of active RCW cluster centers on Camp Lejeune (MCBCL), Croatan National Forest (CNF) and Holly Shelter Game Land (HSGL) in 2001, as determined by remote sensing data. ............................................................................................................................. 53 6. Best performing regression models explaining RCW group size at 105 clusters over four years of observation, 1998-2001. .......................................................... 54 7. Variables incorporated into optimal regression models of RCW groupsize, and multi-model weighted parameter estimates from all models within 2.3 ΔAICc of the optimum.......................................................................... 55 8. Resistance values of different landcover types used to create dispersal models for each species ........................................................................................................