A
Spatially Explicit Model of the Wild Hog for Ecological Risk Assessment
Activities at the Department of Energy's
Savannah River Site.
Karen
Gaines 1,2,3 (kfgaines@usd.edu), Dwayne Porter2,4,
Tracy Punshon3, and I. Lehr Brisbin Jr.1
Author Affiliations
1University of Georgia, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory,
Aiken South Carolina, 29802, USA.
2University of South Carolina, Arnold School of Public Health,
Columbia, South Carolina 29208, USA.
3Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation,
Rutgers University, Nelson Biological Laboratories and Environmental and
Occupational Health Sciences Institute, Rutgers University, Piscataway,
New Jersey, 08855, USA.
4Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, Columbia,
South Carolina 29208, USA.
Abstract
In North America, wild hogs ( Sus scrofa ) are both sought after
as prime game and despised due to their detrimental impacts to the environment
from their digging and rooting behavior. They are also a potentially useful
indicator species for environmental health for both ecological- and human-based
risk assessments. An inductive approach was used to develop probabilistic
resource selection models using logistic regression to quantify the likelihood
of hogs being in any area of the Department of Energy's 805 km2
Savannah River Site (SRS) in west-central South Carolina. These models
were derived by using available SRS hog hunt data from 1993–2000
and a Geographic Information System database describing the habitat structure
of the SRS. The model's significant parameters indicated that wild hogs
preferred hardwoods and avoided pine and shrubby areas. Further, landscape
metric analyses revealed that hogs preferred areas with large complex
patch areas and low size variation. These resource selection models were
then utilized to better estimate exposure of wild hogs to radionuclides
and metals in a disturbed riparian ecosystem on the SRS using two different
possible diets based on food availability. Contaminant exposure can be
better estimated using these resource selection models than has been previously
possible, because past practices did not consider home range and habitat
utilization probability in heterogeneously contaminated habitats. Had
these models not been used, risk calculations would assume that contaminated
areas were utilized 100% of the time, thus overestimating exposure by
a factor of up to 25.
Keywords:
aluminum, ecological assessment, GIS, home range, landscape metrics, nickel,
risk assessment, Sus scrofa, uranium, wild hog
*Corresponding author:
Karen F. Gaines
Department of Biology, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD 57069
SREL Reprint #2889
Gaines, K. F., D. E. Porter, T. Punshon and I. L. Brisbin, Jr. 2005. A spatially explicit model of the wild hog for ecological risk assessment activities at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment 11: 567-589.
