Raphael and others 



Chapter 18 



Landscape-level Analysis of Habitat in Washington 



Table 1 Status of inland sites where Marbled Mtimlets hare been surveyed 

 in Washington 1 , through 1992 



'Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. 



2 Protocol developed by Pacific Seabird Group (Ralph and others 1993). 

 Multiple records from the same station are also excluded. See this document for 

 definition of status categories. 



We obtained two maps of forest vegetation from 

 Washington State natural resource databases for this analysis. 

 These maps represent the only sources of forest cover 

 classified across both Federal and non-Federal lands in 

 Washington. A digital map of old-growth and other cover 

 classes was obtained from the WDFW (Eby and Snyder 

 1990. Collins 1993). This map was updated by Washington 

 Department of Natural Resources (WDNR), Forest Practices 

 Division, using 1991 Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery 

 to account for timber cutting since 1988 (Collins 1993). The 

 map displays old-growth and other forest conditions in western 



Washington from the Pacific coast to 50 miles inland on 

 lands below 3200' elevation (table 2). The 50-mile limit was 

 defined by WDFW as the inland extent of murrelet activity, 

 even though their database contains three records at greater 

 distances (to 53 miles). 



The WDFW forest-cover map was used for both a basin- 

 level analysis and a site-level analysis. We received the data 

 as 1 : 100,000 vector (polygon) maps. We converted the vector 

 maps into a raster (grid) format using the ARC/INFO GRID 

 software (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc., 

 Redlands, CA) at a cell resolution of 50 by 50 meters. We 

 projected the maps from a State Plane coordinate system 

 into a Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) map projection 

 and joined the individual 1:100,000 scale maps together to 

 form one seamless map that we could use with our existing 

 CIS databases. 



We used a second source of vegetation data for basin- 

 level analysis to compare against the WDFW data. The WDNR, 

 Forest Practices Division provided a map of forest serai 

 stages that was developed for the state from 1988 Landsat 

 TM imagery (Green and others 1993). This map is in a raster 

 (grid) format with a cell resolution of 147 by 147 meters and 

 was classified into six classes (table 3). To match the WDFW 

 map, we created a murrelet zone map by drawing a boundary 

 50 miles inland from the Washington Pacific and Puget Sound 

 coasts. This map was used as the geographic extent for all 

 subsequent analyses; maps of vegetation, river basins, and 

 elevation were subset to coincide with this zone map. 



We used other GIS data sources in conjunction with the 

 above sources of forest vegetation data to analyze murrelet 



Table 2 Washington Department offish and Wildlife old-growth classification 1 



Class name 



Description 



Old growth 



Large saw timber 

 Small sawtimber 



Other 



Above 3,200 feet 



Cleared 

 Partial harvest 

 Salt water 

 Freshwater 



Coniferous forest stands, dominant trees > 30" d.b.h. 2 . co-dominant trees > 16" d.b.h., 8 

 or more dominant trees per acre, multi-layered canopy, several snags per acre > 20" 

 d.b.h., many down logs > 24" diameter 



Coniferous forest stands, dominant trees 20-30" d.b.h.. co-dominant trees > 14" d.b.h.. 10 

 or more dominant trees per acre, 2-3 layer canopy, few snags or downed logs 



Coniferous forest from sapling/pole stands to large sawtimber, < 20" d.b.h., closed single 

 layer canopy, very little dead wood 



Non-forested, or non-vegetated. Also includes closed mature deciduous stands 



All areas above 3200 feet were masked out of the updated version of Eby and Snyder's 

 (1990) map 



Clear-cut since 1988 



Partial harvest since 1988 



Ocean, Puget Sound, other marine waters 



Inland lakes, rivers 



1 Source: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Eby and Snyder (1990), Collins (1993). 



2 D.b.h. = diameter at breast height 



USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-152. 1995. 



179 



