State Reports - Colorado The GAP team completed comparative reviews of White River National Forest and San Juan National Forest vegetation base lines to get the CO-GAP vegetation map ready for vertebrate modeling activities. We worked closely with Ken Driese and Dr. William Reiners of the University of Wyoming, Laramie, to push ahead on joint air-videography based validation for both Colorado’s and Wyoming’s GAP vegetation base lines. Fifteen of sixteen statewide transects have now been flown, with over 400 sample video frames produced, to develop the sampling scheme. The land ownership map is undergoing major review as changes have occurred in over 400 State Land Board parcels since the original map was prepared for the land stewardship model of CO-GAP. Additionally, various forest and range management plans, as well as park plans, are under review. A methodology is under development for consideration of various land trust parcels in the state. For vertebrate modeling purposes, ancillary data sets from the Wildlife Resource Information System (WRIS), Colorado Bird Atlas Project (CBAP), Scientific Collections Permit Database (SCICOLL), Colorado Herptile Database, Aquatic Database Management System (ADAMAS), Colorado Vertebrate Ranking System (COVERS), and Colorado Wildlife Heritage Database (CWHD) have been developed for use in the geographic information system. CO-GAP activities have been coordinated with Colorado Natural Heritage Program endeavors to facilitate mutual review of report materials. Site occurrence plots have been generated for over 600 species, and preliminary predictive habitat distributions maps have been prepared for over 80 "prototyping" vertebrate wildlife species. A series of review workshops for species experts were held in June to provide an update on CO-GAP progress to West Slope cooperators and to gather their input. As a result of the workshops, an electronic form has been developed to collect updates from the experts on the habitat links being used for each vertebrate species model. The electronic collector form complements the multipage habitat affinity tables produced for each species, as well as providing additional means to tag the affinities as being primary or secondary in nature. The forms are intended to be used to further note whether the links are directly to those landscape habitat features mapped for Colorado’s vegetation layer, or actually to some microhabitat feature within the land cover features mapped. Additional workshops are being scheduled for the Front Range as well as the San Luis Valley. We are truly grateful, after all our preparations, to be in the thick of the vertebrate modeling activities. Project completion is anticipated for early 1998. |