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Northern Nevada wildlife and topography: Camera trapping data set for 14 mammal species collected from 100 sampling sites in northwestern Nevada

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Nov 22, 2022 version files 33.32 KB

Abstract

Camera traps are one of the most common field techniques for surverying terrestrial mammal communities and thus, much work has gone into understanding how different factors influence species detection at camera trap locations. However, the effect of fine-scale topography, such as terrain slope and position, on wildlife detection has not been explicitly quantified despite strong effects of topography on animal movement in mountainous regions. This data set contains weekly detection non-detection data for 14 mammal species from 100 camera traps sites monitored for 28 months (June 2018 - September 2020) in northwestern Nevada, U.S.A. This sampling extent was split into 3 month sampling seasons, exclusive of winter (Dec, Jan, Feb)  and spring 2020, when data were sparse. In addition to species detection data, that dataset includes topographic variables at cameras sites: 1) terrain slope, calculated in R package raster from a 10m digital elevation model and 2) Topographic position index averaged across three buffer sizes around points 270m, 810m, and 2430m. The land cover variables proportion mixed conifer and proportion pinyon-juniper woodland within a 5000m buffer of sites are also included. Both are derived from the USDA/US DOI Landfire 2016 dataset. The luring variable indicates whether attractant was applied at a site during a given week, the effect of which was assumed to last for a month after the last application.