Birds and the Bakken: Integration of oil well, land cover, and species distribution data to inform conservation in areas of energy development

The goal of this project was to develop a novel methodology to combine the USGS Gap Analysis Program (GAP) national land cover and species distribution data with disturbance data to describe and predict how disturbance affects biodiversity. Specifically, the project team presented a case study examining how energy development in the Williston Basin can affect grassland birds; however, the methods developed are scalable and transferable to other types of habitat conversion (anthropogenic or natural), regions, and taxa. This project had six key components:

1. Develop a dataset delineating all oil well pads in the Williston Basin.
2. Develop a habitat conversion tool to determine the amount and previous land cover from spatially explicit disturbance.
3. Develop a species distribution tool that maps species richness for all input USGS GAP species distributions (two maps for the case study area: all avian species and grassland birds).
4. Develop an ecological effects tool that maps ecological effects (predation/nest success, non-native vegetation, avoidance, and noise in the case study) adjacent to spatially explicit disturbance data.
5. Develop a habitat suitability tool that integrates the outputs from the species distribution and ecological effects tools to determine habitat suitability following disturbance.
6. Develop models to predict habitat and biodiversity loss from predicted future disturbance. 

It is the project team’s expectation that the generated maps and models can assist resource managers by identifying sensitive, biodiverse areas. 



Principal Investigator : Todd M Preston, Rachel T Bolus

Cooperator/Partner : Michael Ward, Kevin J Gergely

Accomplishments

The project team made significant progress on the project components and are continuing to work on the project in FY 2017. The accomplishments for this project are described below.

• All oil well pads in the Williston Basin were delineated. 
• All USGS GAP data were acquired and processed.
• Progress was made on the development of the required ArcGIS tools:
• The habitat conversion description tool is 99 percent complete as of October 1, 2016. One small change is needed to improve graph aesthetics.
• The species distribution map tool is 95 percent complete as of October 1, 2016 (fig. 4). The project team still needs to fix one component that filters by season.
• The ecological effects layer is 50–75 percent complete. The work flow has been developed; however, the project team still needs to implement the workflow in the code.
• The habitat suitability maps are 50–75 percent complete. These maps require output from the ecological effects layer.  Once that layer is coded, completion of these maps should only take a few days.
• The predictive model has not been started as of October 1, 2016, but should only take a few hours to complete once the output from the habitat suitability map is available.
• The peer-reviewed journal article is 95 percent complete.  Much of the article is written; however, the project team requires the output from the unfinished tools to finalize the report.

Note:  This description is from the Community for Data Integration 2016 Annual Report.