Me again with more alien spaceship stuff. In MattDDO's video he talks about building, and I'm paraphrasing, humps around his adjacent stream marsh grasses in the hope that bucks will use them for bedding areas. If I've misstated that, I apologize. I, too, have some interest in the subject. I hunt a lot of flooded timber and swamp. Last year was a nightmare what with all the rain. So, with the flooding, we assumed all the deer would get pushed to higher ground, but what if they found enough dry ground in the swamp to ride it out? Is it a crazy thought?
I have some map (geospatial) data to help, maybe, understand a little more of what might be possible.
It's one meter LIDAR derived digital elevation information. Never mind what all of that means. I just see it as stuff we've never had the opportunity to see before! Now what to make of it?
For reference, here's an aerial image of one part of the farm / swamp / flooded timber. Leaf-on imagery from August, 2018.
Here's my elevation information. Explanation to follow....
Each pixel, or dot that makes the image covers one meter on the face of the Earth. It makes the detail quite impressive. In the past we worked with 30-meter, then 10-meter, and finally 3-meter averages. Now we are down to one.
The elevation here ranges from less than 64 feet above see level to over 75 feet.
The white areas are, normally, always flooded -- < 64 feet above sea level.
Dark blue is one foot taller.
Light blue is one more foot taller.
The continuing rise in elevation continues, orange, brown and green.
So, what I'm looking for are small islands of higher elevation in low elevation areas. Oranges and browns tucked in the vast blueness. Greens in the oranges and browns.
I have no answers. Only questions, or maybe one question. Will a whitetail deer use these little mounds to escape human pressure and rising water levels? And if so, how does that change my strategies?