Raccoon use-availability and oral rabies vaccination (ORV) bait data from the Burlington, Vermont ORV zone

This data publication contains data used in a simulation model of raccoon movement and oral rabies vaccine seroconversion in an 81 square kilometer study area within an oral rabies vaccination (ORV) zone in greater Burlington, Vermont, USA. Land cover data within the study area correspond to the 30 meter resolution Multi-resolution Land Characteristics Consortium’s National Land Cover Data 2011 (NLCD) reclassified into nine categories: open space and low density development, medium to high density development, deciduous and mixed forest, coniferous forest, shrub and grassland, pasture, crops, wetlands, and other. Resource selection function (RSF) data correspond to RSF coefficients estimated from GPS location data of 25 radio-tagged raccoons tracked in the greater Burlington area, as well as theoretical specialist and generalist cases used in movement and bait distribution simulation modeling. Raccoon habitat use and availability data used in the resource selection function (RSF) analysis are included, along with associated extracted reclassified land cover data. Bait data corresponds to the aggregated oral rabies vaccine bait distribution data for ORV deployment in the study area during 2016 and 2017 accomplished by the USDA-APHIS-Wildlife Services National Rabies Management Program (NRMP). The off-time bait calculator refers to the NRMP baiting delivery algorithm which denotes a percentage of time during which bait delivery is restricted by land cover type; these proportions are reported for each 30 meter resolution grid within the study area.
Raccoon GPS location data were collected as part of a larger NRMP ORV-related research project. Oral rabies vaccine bait data were collected as part of the ORV deployment effort in the Burlington vaccination zone. Other derived data products required to parameterize the movement and bait exposure simulation modeling are also included; these are based on bait data, raccoon data, or public domain land cover raster or road vector data.
For more information about this study and these data, see McClure et al. (2022). These data were originally published on 11/16/2021. On 03/14/2022 metadata were updated to include complete citation information for newly published article.