Morongo Basin Conservation Suitability and Prioritization Model

There exists a variety of detailed data from different sources covering the area within the Morongo Basin being considered for conservation efforts. In addition, a detailed linkage design was developed by conservation scientists with the South Coast Wildlands (SCW) to map the areas that have the greatest potential for wildlife movement and hence make them the prime targets for conservations efforts. The problem was that there was no application that could use the linkage designs and the detailed land information to support in the development of a well informed conservation action plan. The effective advance involved the development of a conservation suitability model that took into account key land information and weighted appropriate features as they would impact the primary purpose of supporting wildlife movement in the area and produced a single suitability score. Features that might impede wildlife movement have been evaluated by the SCW report, however a number of features had not been considered and features that would diminish relative conservability of the land had not been accounted for. The conservation suitability model developed in this project incorporated those features that affected the permeability of the land for wildlife movement as well as features that diminish conservation efforts