Great Gray Owl Habitat Model - Northern California [ds280]

Potential foraging habitat for Great Grey Owl (GGO) is paraphrased by Fish and Game (Tom Beck et al) as >=10 acres foraging habitat within a ½ mile radius circle of a potential nest site. This shapefile represents output from a geoprocessing model that extracts potential nesting areas from land cover data along with their associated foraging areas according to the above search criteria. Habitat Criteria: Foraging: CALVEG/EVEG WHR_Types Wet Meadow, Annual Grassland, Perennial Grassland. Nesting: Conifer forest WHR size 4M and larger/denser. Suggested Usage: This dataset is meant to be a scoping tool for investigation into possible Great Grey Owl presence. This dataset is broad in scope, and does not include potentially pertinent factors in determining Great Grey Owl nesting sites. These factors may include elevation, aspect, slope, precipitation, shape and orientation of nesting and foraging areas, and other ground conditions.* Analyzing this dataset overlaying data such as Digital Elevation Models, Existing Vegetation Land Cover, Aerial Imagery and Topographic Maps may enhance the users ability to determine habitat potential strong enough for further field investigation. *Exception: For the current version of this dataset, area within the CALVEG ecological zone "Central Valley" at elevation of less than 1500 feet was excluded from model processing because although inconclusive, there is no current evidence that Great Grey Owls are nesting below 1500 feet in California. This metric and model result may change based on new information as it becomes available (CDFG, 2011).