Habitat Utilization
A primary use for the telemetry and track data collected during this project will be to better understand the habitat needs of lynx in Minnesota. Researchers at NRRI have developed extensive GIS data that will be used to investigate landscape-scale influences on Canada lynx in Minnesota and adjacent areas (Wolter et al. 1995, Wolter and White 2002). We will also use the GIS layers available from the Superior National Forest GIS, which is relevant in part because management decisions are made at that level of spatial resolution. At a landscape-scale, we will determine the extent of correlation between lynx locations and forest-type and age-class, habitat interspersion and fragmentation, highway, road, and trail density, and the relative abundance of prey and competitor species in cover types. Locations of radiocollared lynx will be the primary source for the landscape-scale habitat research, although track information will also be applicable.
Recent reviews have criticized typical habitat analyses that simply correlate vegetation types with animal locations (Garshelis 2000, Morrison 2001). Garshelis (2000) emphasized the need to better incorporate the fitness of the species by including a consideration of demographic parameters as correlates in habitat studies. Similarly, Morrison (2001) suggested that determining the role of critical resources or mechanisms conferring fitness (e.g. attributes of prey species, foraging success, competitive factors) would greatly enhance habitat studies. The effects of these fitness conferring resources and the natural and anthropogenic mechanisms that control them may be particularly applicable to carnivore species. Therefore the detailed analysis of lynx habitat use that will result from this project will be designed to incorporate such factors as relative prey density, relative density of competing mesocarnivores, and lynx demographic parameters along with traditional habitat measures including timber management practices, habitat interspersion, and the effects of roads, highways, and recreational trails.
Despite the need to venture outside of simply correlating vegetation types with lynx locations obtained from telemetry, vegetation is the factor that can most easily be manipulated by management agencies to affect lynx recovery and conservation. Two habitat analyses will be performed to determine factors that affect the persistence of lynx in Minnesota. The first will utilize compositional analysis of lynx telemetry locations to determine the selection of vegetation types. The second will involve the use of resource selection functions to model the role of such fitness conferring niche parameters as prey, mesocarnivore, and road and trail density in affecting lynx use of specific vegetation types (Johnson et al. 2002a, b).