NR505 GIS Applications in Wildlife Sciences

Mondays and Wednesdays 9:30 – 11:20CNR GIS lab Room 26

Home Range Resource Selection Wildlife Habitat Models + Accuracy Assessment Fragmentation Analysis in Fragstats Distance Measurements and Least Cost Path Analysis Functional Connectivity Introductory Remote Sensing + separability testing

http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/rsgis/nr504.htm

Grading: Attendance & Participation 60 % Final Project Presentation 40%

Eva StrandCNR Remote Sensing and GIS Lab

Eva StrandCNR Remote Sensing and GIS Lab

What is Home Range?

The description of an animals space use

The home range is believed to contain the essential requirements such as food, water and cover

Wildlife Techniques Manual

Home range characteristics

• Home ranges often overlap (as opposed to territories)

• Home range size has been correlated to body size

• Can help explain an animals biological patterns

• Can help improve understanding of ecological relationships

Telemetry data or GPS collar

Tabular data in Excel (2003) .dbf or .txt format can be directly imported to ArcGIS or ArcView

Telemetry data or GPS collar

Minimum Convex Polygon

Harmonic Mean

Kernal

Jennrich-Turner

Home Range Methods

Minimum Convex Polygon (MCP) is defined as the polygon drawn around the outermost points

Minimum Convex Polygon

Fixed kernel home range is currently recommended

Contours

The size of the kernel home range is sensitive to the bandwidth value (h) used!

Kernel Density Functions

n – number of locations

h – smoothing parameter

d – distance from the location x, y

….a few assumptions

• Locations are independent

• Large enough sample size

• Smoothing parameter (kernel estimators)

Bandwidth, h-factor, smoothing parameter

• Least Squares Cross Validation (LSCV)– Currently recommended– Tendency to undersmooth, creates multiple local minima– High variability

• Likelihood Cross Validation (CV)– Novel method (Horne and Garton 2006)– Performs better for smaller sample sizes (< 50)– Better fit and less variability

• Normal or Reference method (href)

• Scaled-REF (href is multiplied by a fixed proportion)

Gitzen et al. 2006Horne and Garton 2006

Effect of the smoothing parameter

Home Range Spatial Tools

Hawth’s Tools http://www.spatialecology.com/

Home Range Tool http://blue.lakeheadu.ca/hre/

Animal Movement http://www.absc.usgs.gov/glba/gistools/

Likelihood Cross Validation Tool (Jon Horne)http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/population_ecology/animal_space_use.htm

Hawth’s Tools

www.spatialecology.com

ArcGIS extension

Home Range Tool

• Free download http://blue.lakeheadu.ca/hre/• Developed by Art Rodgers, Ontario • Extension to ArcGIS 9• Kernel Tool• MCP Tool• Display Travel• Calculate travel times• Great User’s Manual and Tutorial Guide!!

Animal Movement Extension• Will utilize any type of point data that can

be brought into ArcView• Works in any projection*• Works on any selected subset of data*• Produces Coverages, Grids, or Tables

i.e. all output is compatible with ArcView

*Except Gin= Gout2 G = Garbage

U.S. Department of InteriorU.S. Geological Survey

Alaska Biological Science CenterGlacier Bay Field Station

Changes to ArcView

Buttons

ToolsMenus

Readings – home range

• Bookhout TA (editor) 1994. Research and Mangement Techniques for Wildlife and Habitats pp.394-403, The Wildlife Society, Bethesda , Maryland .

• Horne JS and EO Garton 2006. Likelihood cross-validation versus least squares cross-validation for choosing the smoothing parameter in kernel home-range analysis, Journal of Wildlife Management 70(3):641-648.

• Gitzen RA, JJ Millspaugh, and BJ Kernohan, 2006. Bandwidth selection for fixed-kernel analysis of animal utilization distributions, Journal of Wildlife Management 70(5):1334-1344.

• Home Range Tool User’s Manual