Rapid Assessment Biodiversity Grid Data for Snow Leopard and Pallas Cat habitats in Manang, Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal, early June 2015

Abstract

This dataset consists of a rapid biodiversity assessment at a Snow Leopard (Panthera uncia) and Pallas Cat (Otocolobus manul) habitat site near Manang village in the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA), Nepal. The data include 25 plots spaced 100m apart from each other, and 5 additional random points. The geo-referencing was done with a GPS, a geographic datum of WGS84 was used with decinal degrees (5 decimals) of latitude and longitude. The bounding box of this data set is: 27.691960 to 28.287450 Northern latitude, and 84.004010 to 83.998410 Western longitude. The grid is located on a slope app. on 4200m above sea level and was visited three times on May 30th, May 31st and June 1st in 2015 allowing for occupancy and distance sampling abundance estimates. Point transects were carried out for bird sightings; animal tracks, insects (butterflies) and vegetation (flowers) were briefly assessed. Two photos were taken for each grid plot, and one sky shot to capture the atmospheric light conditions, e.g. for Remote Sensing work.Noteworthy are the high grazing pressures and strong occurrences of yaks, horses, and goats, as well the detection of bharal (blue sheep), Lammergeier, Himalaya Griffon, Golden Eagle, snow cock, cockoo, pipits and wagtails in this mountain high altitude landscape (all scientific names and details are provided in the taxonomic section of the metadata). Small white snails were found too. A snowleopard kill site (blue sheep and yak) was found, as well as tracks and a resting site on a nearby higher cliff site (where Pallas Cat was also observed earlier). This dataset consists of an MS Excel sheet and is less than 1MB in size.