Airborne Laser Altimetry for Strategic Habitat Conservation Planning on National Wildlife Refuge Lands

May2014

Spatial data layers, predictive model outcomes, and GIS maps describing wildlife habitat relationships are now standard tools for guiding wildlife management and monitoring, and for targeting conservation actions in places where they have the greatest impact (Craighead and Convis 2013). Therefore, it’s not hard to imagine why airborne LiDAR has rapidly become one of the most highly desired geospatial technologies for natural resource management and planning.

LiDAR has quickly transitioned from a novel technology to a valuable and operational environmental data
source that can characterize terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in ways not easily imagined a decade
ago (Evans et al. 2009). Of the variety of LiDAR systems, 3D point cloud data from airborne laser
altimetry shows the greatest potential for wildlife studies. It is highly intuitive (i.e. x, y, z coordinates) and
relatively easy to process into precisely quantified vertical and horizontal vegetation structure and bare
earth surfaces. These layers can then be used to inform best practices for maintaining wildlife populations
and other valued ecosystem services, such as clean and consistent water supplies. LiDAR availability has
also increased as federal, state, and local governments develop cooperative arrangements to cost-effectively acquire data.

Since the start of the National Wildlife Refuge System Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) initiative in 2010,
LiDAR has become a nearly indispensable tool for strategic habitat conservation planning. The Southwest
Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), which encompasses Texas, Oklahoma, New
Mexico, and Arizona, is developing and applying LiDAR products in a number of ways to better target
habitat conservation, its primary mission. For species reaching critically low population numbers, LiDAR
provides a new tool that can be used to reduce species declines and monitor progress toward achieving
habitat and population goals.

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