GISC Helps Capital Projects Respond to a Proposed Critical Habitat Area for the Alameda Whipsnake which Includes Most of the Campus's Hill Area

The Alameda Whipsnake has recently been designated as a rare and endangered species. In accordance with the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service delineated an area it proposed to be the critical habitat for the species. The area covers most of the campus's hill area and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Both the Lab and the Campus used GIS to respond to the proposed area suggesting that the critical habitat area might be limited to smaller areas than the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed. Jennifer Lawrence and David Mandel, both from Capital Projects, called on the GISC to help. The GISC worked with Swaim Biological Consulting to map rock outcroppings in the proposed area using GPS and took existing data including slope, soil type, and vegetation coverage and performed an analysis to identify areas that are likely to be critical habitat for the snake.

The Alameda Whipsnake prefers sunny slopes with low lying scrub vegetation and rock outcroppings to other types of habitat. We used the slope data to calculate aspect and select southerly slopes in the appropriate vegetation coverage types. The campus responded to the Fish and Wildlife Service with both printed maps and an Arcview project including all of the data used. The Fish and Wildlife Service were under court order to designate critical habitat by September 1st of this year.

GISC Staff that worked on the project: Dana Benson, Anders Flodmark, John Radke and Katherine Mortimer