The scientists from the Colorado Natural Heritage Program (CNHP) have completed their first field season of data collection for WBI’s Biodiversity and Habitat Connectivity Study. In total the team surveyed 100 plots over 100 person-days.
The data collected included transect information on plant species present, percent cover of vegetation, availability and extent of vegetation browse by ungulates, and ungulate dropping counts. Here are a few examples of transects from the 2019 field season:
Over the next few months the CNHP Team will work to establish “signatures” of various levels of habitat quality and test extrapolation methods using remote sensing data. They can use this initial data extrapolation to ground-truth the results on 2020 sample sites.
The CNHP Team is expected to present an initial draft of the Study Design to the Science Team in early 2020. They will focus on high elevation data points over the summer 2020 field season and hope to sample 300 additional plots.