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.