| Wildlife
 On
January 23, 2005, the park will capture 54 elk with a helicopter
and net gun and deploy GPS collars to again track elk movements
in and out of the park.
Use
of GPS collars allows determination of elk locations via remote
monitoring. The collar will retrieve a position every 7 hours and
store it for later downloading. Sampling at these intervals will
provide 3-4 locations per elk per day and evenly distribute sampling
throughout the day and night.
In
addition to GPS receivers, collars will include VHF transmitters,
which will operate for 3-5 days per week. The transmitters will
include mortality sensors and will be checked regularly so collars
can be recovered promptly if they malfunction or if elk die during
the course of the study. Checks will be attempted from the ground
and supplemented with aerial telemetry flights. Elk captured will
also be marked with ear tags or PIT tags, so individual animals
can be identified if they are ever recaptured.
The objectives of this study are:
• Generate seasonal maps depicting the geographic extent and
spatial distribution of activity for elk captured in WICA during
the winter.
• Develop resource selection functions relating the distribution
of elk activity to landscape features (e.g., vegetation, roads and
trails, water sources, land ownership and management practices,
etc.).
• Develop monthly estimates of the frequency, duration, and
extent of elk movements across park boundaries.
• Estimate the proportion of wintering elk with seasonal home
ranges that span park boundaries.
• Estimate the proportion of wintering elk that reside outside
WICA during other portions of the year.
• Document responses of elk to hunting outside WICA.
• Estimate vital rates (survival and recruitment); synthesize
results in models to produce updated estimates of population growth
rates. Estimate mortality rates due to hunting for elk that winter
within WICA.
GIS
Most people working with spatial data are aware that we have recently
acquired county wide 2004 color imagery. This photography came from
the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP). These images provide
an accurate and up-to-date background when creating maps, though
their large file size can make working with them cumbersome. To
help with this, Wind Cave, Jewel Cave and Mount Rushmore were clipped
out of the county images to isolate each individual park and allow
for faster computer response time. Each image is stored on our data
server under the respective park. The regional office, which holds
a license for MrSid file compression, will soon be sending even
smaller files of each park, which will yet again improve performance.
We currently have data for Custer, Fall River, Jackson and Pennington
counties.
This image is a screen capture of the 2004 NAIP imagery in ArcMap.
On a different note: To answer requests for a quick and efficient
way to calculate acres and lengths in GIS (Geographic Information
System), some custom tools were created and attached to a new tool
bar. These tools will automatically add a column for acres, feet,
meters, etc. to your data and calculate the corresponding value.
If you are working with ArcMap and find that you can take advantage
of these new tools, take a look under the "help" folder
on our data server or stop by Resource Management and talk with
Bill.
If you are interested in learning more about GIS and haven't visited
the virtual campus lately, take a few minutes to visit http://campus.esri.com/
and look over the new online courses. And finally, if you'd like
to read more about spatial data, GIS or GPS, there is a small library
of books in the Resource Management area available to check out.
Bill Koncerak
Physical Sciences
Jason Walz started as our Physical Science Technician in Cave Resource
Management on January 3rd. He will primarily be working on typing
in all of the backlog cave inventory data into Tom McBride’s
new cave inventory program, which we are now calling SpeloWorks
1.0. He will also be updating the cave quadrangle maps with about
six miles of survey that was completed since he last updated those
maps in the spring of 2005.
Rod Horrocks
Comments and
feedback about Resource Ramblings are encouraged and can be made
to Dan Foster, in person, or via email.
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