Habitat Suitability Analysis for Mountain lions (Puma concolor) on the Southern Cumberland Plateau
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Authors
Moye, Valerie
Issue Date
2007-05-02
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Florida panther , Eastern cougar
Alternative Title
Abstract
Since the 1940’s mountain lions (Puma concolor) have been extirpated from the eastern
United States due to exhaustive hunting, habitat loss, and declining prey populations.
Recently, however, evidence suggests that existing mountain lion populations are
expanding and recolonizing sites where they have been absent for nearly a century. The
southern Cumberland Plateau ecoregion of Tennessee and Alabama, part of the historic
home ranges for the extirpated Florida panther (Puma concolor coryi) and Eastern
Cougar (Puma concolor cougar), contains some of the largest remaining tracts of
contiguous native forests in the southeast. We built this habitat suitability model because
the southern Cumberland Plateau represents unique potential mountain lion habitat in the
southeastern US and because there is a need for landscape level habitat analyses in the
eastern US for this species. Using a geographic information system (GIS) we examined
landscape and habitat characteristics including road density, land cover type, patch
density, and contagion in seven counties in Tennessee and three counties in Alabama to
determine the quality and extent of potential mountain lion habitat in the Southern
Cumberland Plateau Ecoregion. Based on habitat characteristics for mountain lions in
other areas, we identified between 940 km² and 2,240 km² of likely suitable habitat,
which could theoretically support a population of 27 to 65 individuals. High suitability
habitat predicted by the model also correlates with the locations of unconfirmed mountain
lion sightings in the study area.