Land Cover & Habitat Data Website

[Tuffy]

This is pretty darned good. It not only shows some very interesting maps and predicts areas with specific species, but has great data output capabilities. If you know anything about GIS systems, you know how unusual that really is.
http://www.gapserve.ncsu.edu/segap/segap/

[Tuffy]

Among other things, this system attempts to identify the amount (and location) of wild turkey "habitat" in each county. It think it does that pretty well and that's not a simple thing. The results look like this if graphed:

[Tuffy]

I should have note that this is based on 2001 land cover and that is a problem in some ways. We might all agree that the amount of habitat has changed since then, but probably not as much as we might think. There IS some 2011 comparative data, but it's not yet available in this online system. I'm hoping to get my hands on it soon.

In the meantime, we can look at the Harvest comparisons between 2002 (a peak year) and 2016 (just about the lowest in 20 years). This is how the Harvest has changed in each county between those years.

Personally, I think something is wrong with the data because it shows growth, basically, in only the more urbanized counties. That's possible and they do have decent habitat, but something about that seems funny to me.

[Tuffy]

Given the 2001 Habitat estimates and the 2002/2016 Harvest estimates for each county, we can see how the Habitat Acres per Harvest have changed. This would probably be a little less dramatic in some places with the more recent habitat data, but would not change the real decline, IMO.

[Tuffy]

County graphs are more than a little busy, so we might want to look at that last graph by the old Game Zone groupings that I use. Refer to my website ( http://web.ftc-i.net/~tuffye/turkey_index.html ) for the counties included in each.

[flockbuster]

I'm not sure about what other counties, but I think Sumter county had a 2 bird limit in 2002 and a 3 bird limit in 2016 which would skew the harvest change data in that one graph. I would think

[flockbuster]

The same with the acres per harvest. If the acres stayed the same and the same amount of hunters were allowed to shoot 33% more birds, wouldn't the acre per bird go down or am I over simplifying this?

[Tuffy]

I wouldn't call it oversimplifying things, but you make a good point in that it is very complex. Changes in limits and habitat do cloud the picture in any given area. Still, there are some counties in the old Western and Central Piedmont (for example) that clearly peaked in the past. That National Forest property was a very important part of our overall population growth. Those areas strike me as clearly needing some protection. Other areas such as the southern end of the state and the NE areas have either peaked or are very close to it. It's hard to find a growth area remaining and that is true across most of the entire Southeastern U.S..

For problems like you note, the best that I have been able to accept is some measure of Man-Days of effort per Harvest. I think that both takes care of many of those issues and provides some secondhand measure for a population index. That stuff was in the other post and on my web page. We only have it for the last 10 years, though.

If it were really being discussed seriously (in detail), I think we'd have to look at the situation county-by-county and, somehow, consolidate our impressions at the end. My personal thought was that there are some limited number of "habitat types" scattered across the state. Each of them has both some "carrying capacity" and some "current capacity". If we could get to those values, wouldn't we be terribly slack if we didn't act on those with "problems". For now, we let some get worse from lack of perspective and a reluctance to manage in any detail.

The first required step, IMO, is to begin to get some idea of the habitat that exists in different parts of the state, be that counties or some Game Zone segmentation. Second, we have to attempt some measure of population capacity/actual. Harvest is about all that we have for that.

[Tuffy]

I'm into the data and charts and they sometimes look nonsensical to me. Still, my quest is to educate me and the masses so:

The question of habitat change and the effect on Harvest is important. I tried to look at the changes in hardwood acreage and harvest since 2001 and came up with something like this: Note that hardwoods haven't really declined that much by this measure (4% overall) but Harvest has declined more in most areas.

[Tuffy]

The county view looks about the same but does show those odd harvest increases in the more developed counties. Yes, there are age-class issues in looking at hardwood acreage, but I have to grasp it in steps. This is where I am now.

[Gut_Pile]

Tuffy, do you ever do any research on GA?

[Tuffy]

Not much. Did some comparisons across the SE states on harvest and reproduction a while back.

[Tuffy]

Something like this:

[Tuffy]

Tuffy, do you ever do any research on GA?

The GAP website should allow you to look at a lot of land cover and habitat in Georgia, though.

[flockbuster]

Tuffy, I appreciate all the effort you put into these graphs and research. I am not great with statistics so it is a huge help when you make stuff simpler for those of us that went to public school. I don't know if you are sharing your thoughts and ideas with the folks at SCDNR but if there is anything I can do please let me know.

[Tuffy]

This is what the changes in mature forest (poletimber + sawtimber) look like to me over the years. It's really hard to see any real decline in habitat from this. Mature hardwoods haven't changed very much at all and for the better at that.

http://web.ftc-i.net/~tuffye/forestmature.jpg

[Tuffy]

forestmature.jpg

[Tuffy]

Tuffy, I appreciate all the effort you put into these graphs and research. I am not great with statistics so it is a huge help when you make stuff simpler for those of us that went to public school. I don't know if you are sharing your thoughts and ideas with the folks at SCDNR but if there is anything I can do please let me know.

Thank you. I try to talk to them when I can and have for a long time. I'd like to see them have the luxury of being able to consider/manage more specific habitat areas and types, but I don't blame them for it not happening now.