Habitat patch dynamics of desert bighorn sheep Ovis canadensis nelsoni in the Eastern Mojave Desert

The individual chapters of this Dissertation were designed to examine desert bighorn habitat, and the disjunct nature of that habitat. The findings of the first chapter illustrated that although 30 m elevation data yielded a more accurate depiction of the landscape, 100 m data was still adequate for determining habitat quality. The second chapter illustrated that the traditional bighorn habitat model was inadequate when applied to four Eastern Mojave Desert mountain ranges because of its unrealistic distance to permanent water requirement. It was also determined that a single habitat definition could not be formulated that worked equally well on all four mountain ranges because of widely differing topographic values, and distance from permanent water values. The findings of the third chapter suggested that on an intra-mountain scale, desert bighorn habitat exists in a heterogeneously undivided state, but on an inter-mountain scale, may exist in a divided state, or as a metapopulation.