Table 1.
Covariates used in models and references to studies linking variables to grizzly bear habitat selection and use.
Fig 1.
The Yellowhead bear management area (BMA3) in Western Alberta.
Fig 2.
The three snow metrics derived from SNOWARP (Berman et. al., 2018) at 30 m spatial resolution for years 2009–2017.
a-c) Annual date of snow melt shown for spring 2010, 2015 and 2017. Days since snow melt (DSM) was produced by subtracting date of snow melt from the date associated with each grizzly bear telemetry location. d-f) daily binary snow covered area (bSCA) shown on April 1, May 1, and June 1, 2017. g-i) daily fractional snow covered area (fSCA) shown on April 1, May 1, and June 1, 2017.
Table 2.
Overview of the four models assessed for each of the 62 bear-years.
For covariates with a quadratic term included, the linear term was also included. The AIC Tally is a record of the model that had the lowest Akaike Information Criterion score for each bear-year.
Fig 3.
The date of snow melt annually by natural sub-region classification.
Table 3.
A summary of the number of tallies received by each model per year.
Fig 4.
Probability of use was calculated over all available locations with both fSCA and DSM on the x-axis.
The overall trends show increased selection for locations with less snow cover than what is available, as well as preference for locations where snow melted sooner in the spring.
Fig 5.
Probability of use calculated with DSM on the x-axis and (a) categorized by elevation (m) and (b) distance to road (m). Preference is shown for lower elevation locations, especially once snow has melted. Grizzly bears generally were more likely to select for locations closer to roads once snow has melted.