Olivia Cavalluzzi

6 March 2021
ESRM 250 Final Project-: Northern Spotted Owl in Washington State
The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) is a threatened species that resides in the
western part of Washington State, as well as western Oregon, Northwest California, and
Southwest British Columbia (“Northern Spotted Owl”). This non-migratory species has been
threatened by anthropogenic changes to its range (“Northern Spotted Owl”). Northern spotted
owls live in old-growth conifer forests, preferring Douglas fir trees (“Northern Spotted Owl”
2019). They prefer 60-80% canopy cover and a high canopy so they have space underneath the
trees to fly (Lesmeister). Northern spotted owls require late-successional forests with a wide
variety of tree ages and sizes, snags, tree deformities, and dead and decaying trees for nesting
(Lesmeister). Northern spotted owls avoid clear-cut areas and heavily urbanized areas (“Spotted
Owl Life History”). They can live at a wide variety of elevations up to 5,000 feet (“Northern
Spotted Owl” 2022). These owls prefer slopes of 40-60%, which are steeper slopes than other
owls (Strix occidentalis).
Spatial Questions:
1. What is the area at 5,000 ft or lower elevation in their range?
2. Which of these forests are predominantly conifers?
3. Which of these forests have closed canopy cover?
4. Which of these forests are in a late-successional stage?
5. Which areas have a slope between 40-60%?
6. Where are old-growth trees in this area?
7. What areas are heavily urbanized?
8. What are areas for future concern?

Data Sources and Data:

Washington Geospatial Open Data Portal: Historic and Old Growth Trees- vector
Department of Ecology: State of Washington: Urban growth in Washington State- vector,
Climate zones in Washington State- vector
Landfire: WA State elevation- raster, WA State Canopy Cover- raster, WA State Vegetation
Type- raster, WA State successional classes- raster

Workflow- Vector Analysis

1. Open the “Climate Zones” vector and perform a definition query for “NWRO” and
“SWRO” to limit the state to only the owl’s range in the western part of the state.
2. Open the “Historic and Old Growth Trees” vector. Select by attribute for “O” under the
“Historic_O” column to limit the data set to old-growth trees.
3. Buffer the selected old-growth trees by one mile (with dissolve) to include a slightly
larger range for owls beyond the single trees. Clip this new layer to the ecoregions layer.
4. Open the “Urban Growth in WA State” vector. Erase this layer from the ecoregions layer
to eliminate heavily urbanized areas from the potential range.
 5. Return to the “Urban Growth in WA State” vector. Perform a buffer of 5 miles with a
dissolve to identify areas of potential concern as urban expansion continues.
6. Clip buffer of area of concern to ecoregions layer
7. Erase the “Urban Growth in WA State” vector from the buffer layer to identify only areas
of potential future concern.
8. Final map includes final ecoregions layer, buffer vector of areas of concern, and buffer
vector of old-growth trees.
Raster Analysis
1. Set mask to erased ecoregions layer from vector analysis, snap to “WA State Elevation”
and cell size to “WA State Elevation”
2. Reclassify “WA State Elevation” with -14 to 5,000 with a new value of “1” and data over
5,000 with a new value of “0”
3. Create a slope raster from the “WA State Elevation” layer
4. Reclassify the slope with the preferred range ( 40-60% ) given a new value of “3”, the
less suitable range (0-40%) given a new value of “2”, and the least habitable range (60-
90%) given a new value of “1”.
5. Reclassify “WA State Successional Class”: Give “E” (closed late-successional class) the
new value of “4”, give “D” (open late-successional class) the new value of "3", give “A”,
“B”, and “C” (early successional stands) the new value of “2”, and the rest a new value of
“1” because they are least hospitable.
6. Reclassify “WA State Canopy Cover” layer: “Non-forested” gets a new value of “0”,
“>=40 and <50%” gets a new value of “2”, “>=50 and <60%” a new value of “2”, and the
rest are reclassified as “1”.
7. Reclassify “WA State Vegetation Type”: “Conifer” is reclassified as “2”, “Conifer-
Hardwood” is reclassified as “1”, and the rest are reclassified as “0”.
8. The labels for “WA State Vegetation Type”, “WA State Canopy Cover”, and “WA State
Successional Class”, and will default back to their original titles but in their new
groupings. Go into symbology and change their labels to their new numerical label.
9. Go to Raster Calculator. Add “WA State Canopy Cover”, “WA State Vegetation Type”,
“WA State Successional Class”, “WA State Slope”, and “WA State Elevation”,
weighting each one by 0.2. This is the habitat layer. Go into symbology. Use a green to
red scale to symbolize the highest values as green and label them “Most Suitable”. Make
red the lowest values and label them “Least Suitable”.
Habitat Analysis
1. Open a new map. Bring in the final habitat layer from the raster analysis and the old-
growth trees buffer and the areas of concern layer from the vector analysis.
Potential Outcomes as Result of Analysis:
The current northern spotted owl habitat is located primarily in the mountainous regions
of the Olympic Mountains and the western slope of the Cascade Mountain Range. There is very
little if any suitable habitat remaining in the Salish Sea area due to the high concentration of
cities. Any remaining current habitat overlaps with areas of future concern for these owls.
Very few areas meet all preferred criteria, and a large portion of the ones that do are
interspersed by patches of water or glaciers. However, all of this portion of Washington State
falls within the preferred elevation for this owl.
 Old-growth trees are centralized around the Salish Sea. This is very unfortunate because
these few remaining old-growth trees lie within the areas of most concern. As these areas
continue to urbanize, these trees will become inhospitable to the northern spotted owl.

Cartographic Decisions:
I began each of my analyses by performing operations on each layer individually before
combining the layers. I began with the vector layers so I could create the mask that I would use
for my raster analysis. Reclassifying and altering the symbology of each raster before merging
the rasters into the entire habitat was especially important for efficiency.
I had to think carefully about colors and transparency because I was layering vectors on
top of rasters but didn’t want to cover up any information on the map. I made inhospitable areas
red because of the color’s connotations in America, hospitable areas green to reflect the natural
land, and a scale of orange and yellow in the middle. I made the areas of concern an orange tone
to reflect their future uninhabitability, but I increased the transparency by 60-70% so they were
still visible without completely covering up the current state of the land. There are so few old
growth trees in Washington State that I had a hard time getting them to show up on the map.
However, a bright turquoise helped it showed up the best.
In future studies, I would include information on the barred owl because they are a
competitor in the range. I would include data on the specific age of the stands and the width of
the trees. I would also increase the number of layers included in the analysis of the areas of
concern to include more factors, such as prey availability and competition.

Works Cited
Northern spotted owl. National Wildlife Federation. (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2022, from
https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Birds/Northern-Spotted-Owl

Lesmeister, D. B., Davis, R. J., Singleton, P. H., & Wiens, J. D. (n.d.). Chapter 4: Northern
spotted owl habitat and ... - fs.fed.us. Retrieved March 11, 2022, from
https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr966_chapter4.pdf

Northern spotted owl. Oregon Wild. (2019). Retrieved March 10, 2022, from
https://oregonwild.org/wildlife/northern-spotted-owl

Spotted owl life history, all about birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology. , All About Birds, Cornell
Lab of Ornithology. (2019). Retrieved March 10, 2022, from
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Spotted_Owl/lifehistory#habitat

Northern spotted owl. Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife. (2022). Retrieved March 10,
2022, from https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/species/strix-occidentalis-caurina#desc-
range

Strix occidentalis. Fire Effects Information System (FEIS). (n.d.). Retrieved March 10, 2022,
from
https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/animals/bird/stoc/all.html#GENERAL%20DISTRIB
UTION