Environmental conditions at saiga calving and die-off sites in Kazakhstan, 1979 to 2016

This dataset describes environmental conditions at 135 Saiga antelope calving sites (from a total of 214) in Kazakhstan where the predictor variables required for the modelling were available at sufficient resolution. Data collected included climatic variables associated with haemorrhagic septicaemia in the literature, including humidity, temperature and precipitation. Indicators of vegetation biomass, phenology and length of the winter preceding calving were represented using the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), snow depth and snow presence data. Saiga antelope are susceptible to mass mortality events (MME), the most severe of which are caused by haemorrhagic septicaemia following infection by the bacteria Pasteurella multocida. These die-off events tend to occur in May during calving, when saigas gather in dense aggregations. As the bacteria is a commensal organism, which may live harmlessly in the respiratory tract of the saiga, it is believed that an environmental trigger is involved in a shift to virulence in the pathogen or reduction in immune-competence in the host. The attached data show environmental conditions at a set of calving sites of the Betpak-dala population of saigas. This population, one of three in Kazakhstan, is located in the central provinces of the country and is the only one in which massive haemorrhagic septicaemia outbreaks have been recorded. At most of the recorded sites, calving progressed normally, whilst at others mass mortality events occurred during calving or just afterwards, namely in 1981, 1988 and 2015. A set of environmental predictor variables was used to model the probability of an MME at calving aggregations. The dataset, modelling process and results are described in Kock et al. (2018): http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/1/eaao2314 A related shapefile of the full set of 214 sites, and metadata concerning site characteristics and the provenance of the location data is available at: https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/8ad12782-e939-4834-830a-c89e503a298b The attached dataset and site metadata in the above-mentioned Shapefile attribute table can be combined using the variable ID in order to merge the environmental data with information on the calving and MME sites. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/912ea336-ac90-418f-be6a-7ae226e167e9

本数据集详述了哈萨克斯坦135处（总计214处）赛加羚羊产羔地的环境状况，其中包含了建模所需的预测变量，且其分辨率充足。收集的数据包括与文献中描述的出血性败血症相关的气候变量，例如湿度、温度和降水量。植被生物量、物候学以及产羔前冬季的长度通过归一化植被指数（NDVI）、积雪深度和积雪存在数据来表征。赛加羚羊易受大规模死亡事件（MME）的影响，其中最严重的是由巴氏多杀性巴氏杆菌（Pasteurella multocida）感染引起的出血性败血症。这些死亡事件往往发生在产羔期间的五月，当时赛加羚羊会聚集在密集的群体中。由于该细菌是一种共生体，可能无害地存在于赛加羚羊的呼吸道中，因此认为环境触发因素参与了病原体致病性转变或宿主免疫能力降低的过程。所附数据展示了贝特帕克-达拉种群赛加羚羊产羔地的环境条件。该种群是哈萨克斯坦三个种群之一，位于该国中部省份，并且是唯一记录了大规模出血性败血症爆发的种群。在大多数记录的地点，产羔过程进展顺利，而在其他地点，则在产羔期间或之后发生了大规模死亡事件，即1981年、1988年和2015年。使用一组环境预测变量来模拟产羔聚集地发生MME的概率。数据集、建模过程和结果在Kock等人（2018年）的论文中有详细描述：http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/1/eaao2314。完整集合的214个地点的相关shapefile以及关于地点特征和位置数据来源的元数据可在以下链接获取：https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/8ad12782-e939-4834-830a-c89e503a298b。通过使用变量ID，可以将所附数据集和上述Shapefile属性表中的地点元数据相结合，以合并环境数据与产羔和MME地点的信息。关于本数据集的详细信息可在以下链接找到：https://doi.org/10.5285/912ea336-ac90-418f-be6a-7ae226e167e9。