Mule Deer Migration Corridors - Casa Diablo - 2014-2023 [ds3152]

The project lead for the collection of this data was Tom Stephenson. Mule deer (130 adult females) from the Casa Diablo herd were captured and equipped with store-onboard GPS collars (Lotek Pinnacle Pro and Vectronic Survey), transmitting data from 2014-2023. Casa Diablo mule deer are largely traditional migrants, with a winter range stretching between the Benton Range and eastern Inyo National Forest. For summer, individuals move west using a wide range of pathways; however, a concentrated movement corridor passes through Long Valley, across U.S. Highway 395, and into the high mountain Sierra Nevada range. Most deer do not cross into Yosemite National Park. Summer range exists on both sides of U.S. Highway 395, which is a known hotspot for deer-vehicle collisions. Migrants vary in their movements from shorter (4 km) to longer (80 km) distances.GPS locations were fixed between 1-24 hour intervals in the dataset. To improve the quality of the data set as per Bjørneraas et al. (2010), the GPS data were filtered prior to analysis to remove locations which were: i) further from either the previous point or subsequent point than an individual deer is able to travel in the elapsed time, ii) forming spikes in the movement trajectory based on outgoing and incoming speeds and turning angles sharper than a predefined threshold , or iii) fixed in 2D space and visually assessed as a bad fix by the analyst. The methodology used for this migration analysis allowed for the mapping of winter ranges and the identification and prioritization of migration corridors. Brownian Bridge Movement Models (BBMMs; Sawyer et al. 2009) were constructed with GPS collar data from 101 migrating deer, including 445 migration sequences, location, date, time, and average location error as inputs in Migration Mapper. The dataset was divided into two overlapping subgroups based on winter range location (i.e., north, central) and analyzed separately, but visualized together as a final product. The averag