Spatial Extent of Data
USGS Data Source
USGS Thesaurus Keywords
ISO 19115 Topic Category
Place Keywords
Migration Stopovers of Mule Deer in the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah
The Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah is home to around 5,200 mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus). Ongoing research by the Utah DWR has continued to shape our understanding of their annual migration. In contrast to the Volume 1 report (Kauffman et al. 2020), the Paunsaugunt Herd in this Volume includes the addition of 25 individual mule deer, 127 migrations, and 161 winter range sequences. Beginning in early October the mule deer migrate south an average of 36 mi (58 km) to winter range along the Utah-Arizona border. Approximately 20–30 percent of the Paunsaugunt Plateau herd reside in northern Arizona during the winter, sharing winter range also used by deer from Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau herd. Beginning around mid-April, the deer return north to their summer range on the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The most significant challenge for these deer is U.S. Highway 89 which bisects this migration corridor and winter range, where deer-vehicle collisions have historically been a problem. In 2012, the Utah Department of Transportation and partners placed 12.5 mi (20.1 km) of wildlife exclusion fence between existing and new crossing structures to reduce deer-vehicle collisions and provide connectivity for deer and other wildlife across the highway. These mitigation measures have been a tremendous success, facilitating more than 78,600 successful mule deer crossings and a 77 percent crossing success rate (Cramer and Hamlin, 2019). These data provide the location of migration stopovers for Mule Deer from the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah. They were developed from Brownian bridge movement models using 244 migration sequences collected from a sample size of 77 adult mule deer comprising GPS locations collected every 2 hours.
Author(s) |
Matthew J Kauffman |
Publication Date | 2022-04-07 |
Beginning Date of Data | 2017-12-01 |
Ending Date of Data | 2021-06-18 |
Data Contact | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.5066/P9TKA3L8 |
Citation | Kauffman, M.J., Lowrey, B.H., Beck, J., Berg, J., Bergen, S., Berger, J., Cain, J.W., Dewey, S., Diamond, J., Duvuvuei, O., Fattebert, J., Gagnon, J., Garcia, J., Greenspan, E., Hall, E., Harper, G., Harter, S., Hersey, K., Hnilicka, P., Hurley, M., Knox, L., Lawson, A., Maichak, E., Meacham, J., Merkle, J., Middleton, A., Olson, D., Olson, L., Reddell, C., Robb, B.S., Rozman, G., Sawyer, H., Schroeder, C., Scurlock, B., Short, J., Sprague, S., Steingisser, A., and Tatman, N., 2022, Migration Stopovers of Mule Deer in the Paunsaugunt Herd in Utah: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9TKA3L8. |
Metadata Contact | |
Metadata Date | 2022-04-07 |
Related Publication | Loading... |
Citations of these data | Loading https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20225008 |
Access | public |
License | http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/ |
Harvest Date: 2024-07-24T04:01:55.917Z