Wood bison migration metrics and environmental covariates

Migration is an evolutionarily stable adaptation when movement costs are outweighed by fitness gains. Migration is defined as the predictable movement between seasonal ranges in response to differential resource availability. However, migrations to locate suitable mates, and calving or nursery grounds are also common across taxa. For ungulates, the growth of new vegetation (i.e., green-wave) has been identified as a key mechanism influencing migration between seasonal ranges. We investigated how the green-wave influenced migration in a wood bison (Bison bison athabascae) population in northern Alberta, Canada, while also considering risk of calf predation by wolves (Canis lupus). Each year, all collared females in the population migrated an average of 28-kilometers over 6-days to a region at the western edge of their annual range between late-May and early-June. By late-June they migrated back to their core range, averaging a 40-kilometer migration distance over 10-days. We found that t..., , , # Ronald Lake wood bison migration dataset (2013 - 2019)

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hdr7sqvt4](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hdr7sqvt4)

## Description of the data and file structure

Between 2013 and 2019, 58 females were fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) collars by Alberta Environment and Protected Areas at a 1.5-hr fix-rate for various lengths of time (n = 38 Lotek Newmarket, Canada; 10 Vectronics Berlin, Germany; 10 Tellus Lindenberg, Sweden). We observed an annual spring migration by all females (i.e., complete migration; Avgar et al., 2014) in May or early-June to a distinct region near where the McIvor River exits the Birch Mountains (hereafter referred to as the “spring range”; Figure 1). We calculated instantaneous rate of green-up (IRG) as the first derivative of the positive slope of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI; MOD9Q1 product from MODIS terra satellite) curve for a given 250×250-m cell

### Files and variables

#### File: StudyArea\_MaxDat...