Summary: National Geographic Explorer Rae Wynn-Grant would use a map such as this one to look at where black bears might come into conflict with people. The land cover dataset shows land use globally and the bear location layer is like one Dr. Wynn-Grant would have collected during her work in the area around Lake Tahoe.

Location: Lake Tahoe, California & Nevada, Western United States

National Geographic Explorer: Rae Wynn-Grant, Large Carnivore Ecologist

Explorer’s Goals: Where are bears and humans overlapping? By mapping these specific places, Dr. Wynn-Grant brings information back to communities living with bears so they can make informed decisions to protect bears and people living near bear habitat.

Data Collected: To study black bears safely, Dr. Wynn-Grant uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) to collect evidence of bears in an area (scratches on trees, scats, or footprints) and radio collars to understand where bears travel. Then she loads the data into a geographic information system (GIS), such as ArcGIS, to examine and analyze the data. To protect the bears from people, Dr. Wynn-Grant provided fictional data for this map. The bear locations on this map are similar to the data she collected, but the map does not show exactly where she observed evidence of bears.

Questions:

• Open the interactive version of the map in National Geographic MapMaker. Click on “Map Layers” to learn what each color represents in terms of land cover. Where on this map do you think bears could be encountering people?