Lehmhuhl et al. developed a Bayesian Belief network to asses the habitat capability for elk, mule deer and white-tailed deer in the Columbia River basin. Their model weighed factors such as disturbance, available forage types and hiding cover to determine if an area would increase in capability or decrease. Overall, the habitat capability for all three ungulates increased in 15 of the 16 regions studied. The main reason for the increase was a drastic rise in the available forage. In contrast, hiding cover for all animals was shown to decrease, but at a lower rate than the increasing forage. The authors' only real concern was their scale of habitat mapping may have been to coarse for the study design, in terms of looking at riparian and small scale vegetation.
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