Projected contemporary habitat distribution and quality for wood turtles in the midwestern United States

Abstract Habitat suitability models (HSMs) play an important role in conservation planning by identifying areas for habitat management and guiding surveys for population discovery and monitoring. The wood turtle Glyptemys insculpta is a riverine turtle that uses both riparian and upland environments. Habitat loss and degradation have resulted in range‐wide declines of this species throughout the United States. Previous HSMs have been developed for wood turtles; however, no published HSM we are aware of exists for their range in the midwestern United States (including parts of Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin), or has incorporated terrestrial, aquatic, and climatic variables. We developed a wood turtle HSM across their distribution in the midwestern United States using Random Forest. Modeling units consisted of 800–1,000‐m stream segments and a 300‐m buffer surrounding each segment. We obtained verified occurrence records from 2000–2024 from state agencies, concurrent research projects, and the community science platform iNaturalist, resulting in 1,833 segments with documented occurrence to serve as model training data. Assessment metrics indicated good model performance (area under the operator curve = 0.92, true skill statistic = 0.6704). Stream order, width, and gradient were the most influential aquatic variables, with lower stream order, lower widths, and lower gradient being associated with higher probability of occurrence. The most influential terrestrial variables were proportion of still water in the terrestrial environment, landscape condition index, and topographic ruggedness index, with lower proportion of still water in the terrestrial environment, moderate to high landscape condition, and lower topographic ruggedness being associated with higher occurrence probability. The majority of stream segments (68.4%) with ≥0.8 probability of occurrence currently lack documented wood turtle populations, allowing for prioritization of these streams for future surveys. These results can assist with guiding habitat management and restoration efforts in their midwestern United States range.