Kauai and Maui Lidar derived environmental layers for bird habitat modelling

Translocation, often a management solution reserved for at-risk species, is a highly time-sensitive intervention in the face of a rapidly changing climate. The definition of abiotic and biotic habitat requirements is essential to the selection of appropriate release sites in novel environments. However, field-based approaches to gathering this information are often too time intensive, especially in areas of complex topography where common, coarse-scale climate models lack essential details. We apply a fine-scale remote sensing-based approach to study the 'akikiki (Oreomystis bairdi) and 'akeke'e (Loxops caeruleirostris), Hawaiian honeycreepers endemic to Kaua'i that are experiencing large-scale population declines due to warming-induced spread of invasive disease. We use habitat suitability modeling based on fine-scale lidar-derived habitat structure metrics to refine coarse climate ranges for these species in candidate translocation areas on Maui. We found that canopy density was consi..., An Optech HA-500 dual channel airborne lidar system aboard the Global Airborne Observatory (GAO) was used to collect the lidar point cloud data over east Maui during January 12–14, 2018. During these dates, collection conditions were very good with an absolute positional error of less than 10 cm given previous collections with the same sensor. Flights were performed at an altitude of 2000 m above ground level and a speed of 130 kt. The lidar was configured to have a combined pulse density 200 kHz, scan frequency 34 Hz, and field of view set to 34 degrees. Given these parameters, we computed the point and pulse densities for every 2 m pixel in the coverage. This resulted in 99% of the coverage having point pulse densities between 0.97 and 13.8 pulses m-2 (1.95-37.19 points m-2). Less than 0.03% of the total number of pixels recorded zero pulse returns in the area of interest. Upon visual inspection of these pixels, it was confirmed that most were over water bodies. , These ASCII files can be opened in any GIS software tool (ie QGIS, ArcGIS Pro, etc). Their intended use is in the maximum entropy software (MaxEnt version 3.3.4 k).