Mapping landscape connectivity for moose across the northeastern United States

Connectivity describes how well a landscape facilitates or impedes the movement of animals. Maximizing connectivity is a common management goal, especially for large mammals like moose (Alces americanus americanus) that occupy large home ranges and have the capacity to move long distances. Moose in the northeastern US (encompassing the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) represent a management priority and are expected to decline due to the near-term impacts of climate change and landscape development that will alter the distribution of habitats across the region. Large-scale maps of moose connectivity are unavailable but would provide an important resource for management planning to improve moose persistence in the landscape. We used an omnidirectional circuit-theory approach to model and map moose connectivity across the six states in the northeastern US. The approach involved integrating a distribution map developed from an occurrence model and a resistance map developed from expert opinion data, along with home range information and current landcover maps to depict expected movement flow. The data release includes 1 CSV file that contains expert-elicited responses regarding moose occurrence and resistence to movement. The release also includes 6 rasters (1 and 2) the Omniscape inputs files named "source.tif" and "resistance.tif"; (3) the connectivity raster using a 0-threshold "source" input named "cumulative_current_map_raw0.tif"; (4) the Omniscape connectivity raster using a 0.2-threshold "source" input named "cumulative_current_map_raw02.tif"; (5) and (6) the respective normalized connectivity rasters, named "normalized_map_crop0.tif" and "normalized_map_crop02.tif". The latter two rasters can be categorized into flow categories if desired: impeded (areas with less current than in a resistance-free landscape), diffuse (areas with as much current as a resistance-free landscape), intensified (areas with more current than a resistance-free landscape), and channelized (areas with much more current than a resistance-free landscape).