GIS data for predicting the occurrence of cave-inhabiting fauna based on features of the Earth surface environment in the Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) Region

Cave-limited species display patchy and restricted distributions, but are challenging to study in-situ because of the difficulty of sampling. It is often unclear whether the observed distribution is a sampling artifact or a true restriction in range. Further, the drivers of the distribution could be local environmental conditions, such as cave humidity, or they could be associated with surface features that are surrogates for cave conditions. If surface features can be used to predict the distribution of important cave taxa, then conservation management goals can be more easily obtained. These GIS data represent the input and results of a spatial statistical model used to examine the hypothesis that the presence...

Types: Citation; Tags: Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) Region, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), baseflow, biodiversity, caves, All tags... karst, precipitation, soils, species distribution models, species ranges, subterranean species, temperature, topography, troglobionts, Fewer tags