Raster maps of relative risk of chronic wasting disease transmission based on environmental covariates for the South Converse Mule Deer Herd, Converse County, Wyoming

These spatial layers were created to provide estimates of relative risk of a mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) contracting chronic wasting disease (CWD) based on environmental properties of habitat visited by the deer. We modeled relative risk of disease transmission using location data from GPS-collared mule deer in Wyoming that were CWD-tested annually, and used generalized linear models (GLMs) to model the probability a deer contracted CWD within a one year time span contingent on environmental properties extracted from GPS use points. We compared models with different combinations of environmental variables to identify the most important properties. The best model found that relative risk of disease was best predicted by several properties of environments visited by deer, including distance to secondary road, distance to cropland (during winter months), distance to perennial water source (during summer), and compound topographic index (CTI) during both summer and winter. The best model also differentiated risk by the deer’s PRNP genotype, a marker delineating two genetic groups that experience different disease progression of CWD (genotype SF or SS). Because we found that risk differed by habitat use in summer compared to winter, and differed for the two genotypic groups, we produced four risk maps: risk for the SF genotype during summer (bestmodel_risk_summer_SF.tif), risk for the SS genotype during summer (bestmodel_risk_summer_SS.tif), risk for the SF genotype during winter (bestmodel_risk_winter_SF.tif), and risk for the SS genotype during winter (bestmodel_risk_winter_SS.tif).