Erica F. Stuber | X-SCALE ECOLOGY

Originally developed to help wildlife professionals visualize the statistical output of a specific species distribution model, students interact with this dynamic shiny app as a computer lab exercise (instruction excerpt below). See open access publication describing our work here, open source code on GitHub, and the shiny app website.

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Your Goals:

1) Come up with 2 possible future scenarios for the State of Nebraska that would be reflected in habitat cover (e.g., corn prices expected to increase leading to 25% increase in habitat in corn production).
2) Choose a county in Nebraska
3) Compare ‘business as usual’ condition for pheasant habitat suitability (the default on the simulator) to your 2 possible futures.
4) Given your ideas of how pheasant respond to changes in their habitat (play around with the different values of each habitat type to investigate), can you hypothesize any habitat management plans that would mediate pheasant habitat suitability decline in response to your scenarios (if they are expected to decline)
5) Are there any areas of land that appear resistant to suitability decline in your scenarios?