Identifying Potential Habitat for
Northern Long Eared Bats

Future Work

While the NLCD provides specific land cover information, it would be interesting to use remote sensing data to specifically identify types of trees/riparian vegetation. Additionally, it would be useful to apply the Utility Network tool in ArcGIS to help identify the most likely corridors bats are using for migration. This could help identify key watersheds for conservation. Biologists are still working to understand the importance of habitat connectivity; further spatial analysis would help prioritize areas based on habitat fragmentation.

So much of conservation relates to political and economic feasibility. A natural next step for this project would be a land ownership and property parcel analysis. Overlaying this information could inform managers on who to contact, if the land is privately or publicly owned, and the overall feasibility of an acquisition or conservation project.

The Protected Areas Database (seen below and linked here) provides extensive information for all protected parcels of land in the United States. I hope to utilize this information and more in the future to improve the analysis.