The project lead for the collection of this data was Erin Zulliger. Elk (5 adult females) were captured and equipped with GPS collars (Litetrack/Pinpoint Iridium collars, Lotek Wireless Inc., Newmarket, Ontario, Canada or Vectronic Aerospace) transmitting data from 2019-2023. The Dixie Valley herd does not migrate between traditional summer and winter seasonal ranges. Therefore, annual home ranges were modeled using year-round data to demarcate high use areas in lieu of modeling the specific winter ranges commonly seen in other ungulate analyses in California. GPS locations were fixed at 1-6 hour intervals in the dataset. To improve the quality of the data set, the GPS data locations fixed in 2D space and visually assessed as a bad fix by the analyst were removed.

The methodology used for this migration analysis allowed for the mapping of the herd’s annual range. Brownian bridge movement models (BBMMs; Sawyer et al. 2009) were constructed with GPS collar data from 5 elk, including 15 annual home range sequences, location, date, time, and average location error as inputs in Migration Mapper. BBMMs were produced at a spatial resolution of 50 m using a sequential fix interval of less than 27 hours. Home range is visualized as the 50th percentile contour (high use) and the 99th percentile contour of the year-round utilization distribution. Annual home range designations for this herd may expand with a larger sample.