Second Iteration of Range Wide Lesser Prairie Chicken Lek Habitat Suitability in 2019, Predicted in Southern Great Plains

We developed a second iteration of habitat suitability models for Lesser Prairie Chicken leks, across their range. The first modeling iteration used lek data collected from 2002 to 2012, land cover data ranging from 2001 to 2013, and anthropogenic features from 2011. Our second iteration model used occurrence points from new lek surveys (2015 to 2019) and updated predictor layers to evaluate changes in lek suitability and to quantify current range-wide habitat suitability. We created suitability models from 2 predictor sets: one including all predictors, and the other excluding state as a predictor. All 11 predictors included in the "with state" predictor set were: average Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), distance to Federal Air Administration (FAA) structures, distance to highways, distance to roads, distance to transmission lines, percent used landcover within 5000 meters (m), CRP within 5000 m, land condition index, state, and Topographic Ruggedness Index (TRI).

We developed models using the MaxEnt (Maximum Entropy) modeling algorithm with Vistrails: Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling [SAHM 2.2]. Details about all inputs and model methods are included in the associated manuscript.

The following data bundles contain input rasters, processing steps, and output files from the vistrails/SAHM modeling workflow:
1. ) 'LPC_archive_bundle_metadata.xml' (this file) which contains FGDC metadata describing the archive bundle, as well as source information for 3 predictors that only required minimal processing prior to modeling.

2) '_archive_raster_inputs_XX.tif' and archive_raster_inputs_XX.xml where XX is the name of 1 of 8 input rasters that were created and used to generate these model results. The original layers and sources used to produce each predictor, as well as processing steps, are specified in each .xml file.

3) '_archive_workflow_FinalModel.vt' where "NLCD2016 state bckgrnd" and "NLCD2016 wostate bckgrnd" are the names of the history nodes which produced 8 output rasters in this bundle. The file "Maxent_mess_map.tif" was also produced by this .vt file. Contains a VisTrails/SAHM workflow document which contains the workflow that was used to create these outputs.

4) 'XX.tif' where XX is the name of 1 of 9 specific output rasters produced from '_archive_workflow_FinalModel.vt'. These outputs include continuous and thresholded probability maps for models including and excluding state as a predictor, as well as a MESS (Multivariate Environmental Similarity Surface) map that describes areas with restricted environmental conditions for this species.

The remaining data files are the intermediate workflow products as well as the final analyzed model outputs.