These maps consist of a map of the portion of the study area covered by the main map, and then subsets of this map showing sections with certain numbers of wolf observations. They are in Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf files), which makes them viewable and printable on computers with Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free program available for download). They provide a glance at possible answers to the question "What habitat do wolves use?" Several cautions are in order when thinking about this question. First, this is a specific site. The wolves are using the habitat available to them. If, for example, they are using deciduous forest at the study site, it doesn't mean that they would never use lodgepole pine forest. It simply isn't a choice available to them at this site. Another related has to do with areas on the main map that had no wolf observations. These are not necessarily unused by the wolves outfitted with radio transmitters in this study because they are bad physical habitat. They may simply be outside of the range of the marked animals. They may very well be part of the range of an unmarked wolf pack. When looking at these maps it is more interesting to compare areas with a few wolf observations to areas with many wolf observations than to compare areas with observations to areas with none. The user should think critically about other possible limitations of the data. This said, it is still compelling to see where wolves were observed in this study. Click on the links below to view the maps:
For users interested in making quantitative comparisons of habitat use, one good approach is to download the complete wolf data set from The International Wolf Center, download ArcExplorer software (a free GIS program) from ESRI, and download the GIS layers of interest from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources web site. It may also be necessary to have access to database software.