Mapping Western Pond Turtle Habitat

A Luckiamute Water Council member, who was also a Pacific Wildlife Research employee, approached the University of Oregon Geography program in spring 2004 with a student GIS project. He proposed that a student make a map predicting the native Western Pond Turtle habitat within the Oregon Coastal Range watershed.

Per the client’s request, primary data came from the National Wetlands Index, which only partially contained the watershed. A DEM analysis, soil types data, and vegetation data was used to predict female preference for nesting sites. Due to time constraints and distance between the university and the watershed, turtle basking sites and food sources could not be entered into Heather’s analysis. Her final submission was the following poster (file size reduced for web viewing).

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