Department of Fish & Wildlife
Biogeographic Data Branch
1807 13th Street, Suite 202
Sacramento, CA 95811
(916) 322-2493 • Email BDB

ACE-II: GIS Data and Ecoregional Model

• Statewide GIS Data
• Ecoregional Model

The ACE-II project team developed spatial data layers that depict California’s biological diversity and recreational opportunities. The GIS data layers can be displayed in the ACE-II Viewer or are available by request.

Statewide GIS Data

The ACE-II biological richness data include native richness and rarity layers developed for each of six taxonomic groups: birds, fish, amphibians, plants, mammals, and reptiles. Information on the location of four sensitive habitat types, wetlands, riparian, rare upland natural communities, and high value salmonid habitat, was also assembled. The layers can be used to view the distribution of richness and rarity, by individual taxonomic group and overall, throughout the state and within each USDA ecoregion.

The ACE II recreational data include maps of harvest species richness, recreational access opportunities, hunting demand and hunting use. These maps provide coarse-scale representations of specific recreational needs and opportunities statewide.

Tables of data layers. All data are applied to a statewide, 2.5 square mile hexagon grid.

Biological Data	Category	Layer	Source	Process
	Native species richness	Birds	CWHR ranges	Count of number of species per hex.
		Amphibians
		Reptiles
		Mammals
		Fish	Brown & Moyle ranges
		Plants	Jepson Ecoregions based on The Jepson Manual (Hickman 1993).
	Rarity-weighted richness index (RWI)	Birds	CNDDB records (excluding extirpated records and records with accuracy of >1 mile) and additional museum records. All records were buffered by 1 mile to standardize accuracy.	RWI= Σ 1/# hexes per species (the species found in the fewest number of hexes have the highest values)
		Amphibians
		Reptiles
		Mammals
		Fish
		Plants
	Rare Species Richness	Birds		Count of number of rare species per hex.
		Amphibians
		Reptiles
		Mammals
		Fish
		Plants
	Sensitive habitats	Riparian	Habitat mapped by Calveg, CNDDB, DWR, NWI, local maps	All hexes with a mapped location of the habitat type marked as presences (0=not present; 1=present).
		Wetlands
		Rare natural communities	CNDDB mapped Rare natural communities excluding riparian and wetland habitats from CNDDB and local vegetation maps.
		High value salmonid habitat	COHO, steelhead, and heritage native trout watersheds.
Recreational Data	Category	Layer	Source	Process
	Harvest species richness	Bird	CWHR range maps	Count of number of harvest species per hex.
		Mammal
		Fish and Amphibian	Brown & Moyle ranges and CWHR range maps
	Hunting demand	Deer tag demand	DFG data	# of tags available / # of tag applications, averaged over multiple years.
		Waterfowl hunt demand		# available hunting spots / # of applicants, averaged over multiple years.
	Recreational access	Percentage public huntable lands per county	Green-info ownership layer	Area of public huntable lands / Total area of county
		Fishing opportunity locations	DFG data	Presence or absence per hex of DFG fishing guide locations, DFG lands with fishing opportunity, or fish plant locations (past 8 years).
		Wildlife viewing opportunity locations	Green-info ownership layer and Watchable Wildlife locations	Presence or absence per hex of all state and federal public lands and Watchable Wildlife locations.
	Hunting use (harvest per county)	Deer	DFG tag returns	10- year avg of tag returns per county
		Waterfowl	FWS and DFG
		Elk	DFG tag returns
		Pronghorn	DFG tag returns
		Wild pig	DFG data
		Bear	DFG tag returns

 

Ecoregional Model

The ecoregional GIS data layers depict the biological index model results by USDA Ecoregion Section.

The ecoregional analysis combined four biological richness indices, native species richness, rare species richness, “irreplaceability” (i.e., rarity-weighted richness), and the presence of sensitive habitats, in a weighted additive model to produce the ACE II biological index surface. The model results show the areas of highest richness and rarity within each ecoregion of the state. Areas with a high biological index score would be expected to have high conservation value and meet multiple conservation goals, subject to certain assumptions and limitations. A full description of the data collection and modeling process, as well as the assumptions and limitations of this process, is available in the ACE-II Project Report.

Because each ecoregion was analyzed separately, the biological index surface is meant to be viewed only one ecoregion at a time; biological index scores are not directly comparable between ecoregions. The model results for individual ecoregions can be displayed in the ACE-II Viewer or are available by request.