Potential Vertebrate Species Distribution for California

This layer was deriverd from the Teale Data Center MAPGRID layer used in
conjunction with a list of potential riparian and wetlands species as queried
from the California Wildlife Habitat Relation (WHR) model. The final layer
(vertpot) has a rank order value, normalized to a value between 0 and 1, for
each 1:24,000 scale quad.

The MAPGRID layer contains polygons representing 7.5 minute USGS quads. It was
mathematically generated as a decimal degree grid and projected into the Albers
projection. Longitude and latitude values in both decimal degree and
degrees-minutes-seconds, mapnames, and USGS codes are present as polygon
attributes. Tics contain decimal degree longitude and latitude values, and are
present at all quad corners.

The Wildlife Habitat Relation (WHR) model was used to select only riparian
species for California. A species/quadcodes data set was obtained from Tom
Lupo of the Wildlife Management Division of the Department of Fish and Game and
this table was used together with the WHR derived list to produce a table
indicating the number of potential species for each quad. This resultant table
was finally linked to the MAPGRID layer, giving a value for species richness
for each 1:24,000 quad. The species richness values were then put in rank
order and normalized to values between 0 and 1, with 1 being the highest
ranking and 0 the lowest.