Description
With mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), hereafter, deer, populations in decline, wildlife managers have increased their efforts to improve factors that limit population growth. In the State of Utah (hereafter, Utah), these efforts have included habitat restoration which is expected to improve environmental conditions for deer. Some of these efforts include pinon-juniper removal, prescribed burning, and spraying of invasive plant species. Although previous work has demonstrated the local impacts of restoration on deer populations, it is unknown how the environmental conditions in the landscape surrounding restoration treatments may modify local restoration impacts. Identifying how both local and landscape-scale conditions influence deer response to habitat restoration would ensure valid inference, and enable spatially-precise management recommendations. Our objective was to identify the scale-specific environmental drivers that influence mule deer seasonal use of 8 types of restoration projects using data from 1,936 GPS-collared deer from 2015-2021, and 813 treatment sites. Our findings showed that the abundance of collared deer on restoration sites is related to both the type of restoration treatment examined, and patterns of landcover composition surrounding restoration sites at 1, 5, 10, and 20km spatial scales. While High Elevation Fire Rehabilitation and Sagebrush Restoration treatments, and Pinyon-juniper Removal treatments had the highest relative use during summer, and winter, respectively, use of treatments during winter was greater in landscapes containing additional treatment sites. We found that during winter, relative use across all treatment types was higher when restoration projects were sited within 10-20km of Pinyon-Juniper Removal treatments with and without seeding. Restoration projects that were not sited in proximity of Aspen restoration or Low Elevation Fire Rehabilitation sites also had higher estimated use during winter. Together, our analyses can provide decision support for determining the optimal locations for future restoration treatments to strategically design landscapes expected to support the highest relative use by focal wildlife.
Document Type
Dataset
DCMI Type
Dataset
File Format
.xlsx, .R
Viewing Instructions
Special software required to use data: R
Publication Date
11-5-2025
Funder
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
Publisher
Utah State University
Award Number
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources grant W-215-R-1
Methodology
Brief description of collection and processing of data: Spatial and descriptive data (e.g., size, location, category description, and end date) regarding Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative (WRI) Habitat Restoration Treatments projects submitted to the WRI program are publicly available for download from https://wri.utah.gov/wri/. We extracted project-specific information including descriptions of on the ground activity and restoration goal, which expert habitat and wildlife biologists use to define eight treatment categories for the state of Utah (i.e., Aspen, High Elevation Fire Rehabilitation, Low Elevation Fire Rehabilitation, PJ Removal, PJ Removal with Seeding, Riparian, Sagebrush Restoration, and “Other” treatments). The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) has been capturing mule deer annually during winters via helicopter net-gunning since 2014. We included deer data from Winter 2015 - Winter 2019 and Summer 2021 in our analysis, removing 2014 deer data due to small sample sizes. We conducted autocorrelated kernel density estimation (aKDE) home range analysis based on GPS collar data from 1,936 individuals using the 'ctmm' package in R. To capture potential within-treatment site variation in deer use, we “sampled” relative use at multiple locations within each WRI site in proportion to the size of the treatment site. Once we extracted relative use from locations at sampling points within WRI treatment sites, we quantified relationships between relative use across WRI sites and environmental covariates expected to be influential in shaping mule deer space use. Specifically, we evaluated the relationships between seasonal relative use of WRI sites and landcover composition within candidate buffers (or scales) of 1km, 5km, 10km, and 20km radii surrounding each relative use sampling location.
Scientfic Names
Odocoileus hemionus
Start Date
2015
End Date
2021
Location
Utah
Language
eng
Code Lists
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR), Watershed Restoration Initiative (WRI), autocorrelated kernel density estimation (aKDE)
Disciplines
Biology | Natural Resources and Conservation
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Solberg, Jaylin, "Data accompanying "Landscape composition surrounding restoration projects modulates use by wildlife: a case study of mule deer in Utah"" (2025). Browse all Datasets. Paper 255.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/all_datasets/255