Grassland quality and pollinator habitat potential in Southwest Louisiana

Potential pollinator habitat was derived by ranking land use classifications and grassland quality based on ground truthing and remotely sensed features indicative of remnant prairie. High resolution (10m) land use data served as the basemap (Hartley et al 2017) from which most categories were identified. All known prairie remnants, prairie plantings, and clusters of mima mounds were delineated. Mima mounds were detected by deriving a slope at 1m scale with greater than 5% from high resolution LiDar data (3m). Mima mounds are indicative of areas in which the topsoil has not been significantly disturbed, and therefore have a higher potential to contain native prairie vegetation. Based on an in-depth literature review of pollinator ecology, high quality grasslands and land cover categories were ranked based on their relative potential to serve as pollinator habitat. Land cover categories were ranked in descending order from highest to lowest potential pollinator habitat.