NR505 GIS Applications in Wildlife Sciences

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NR505 GIS Applications in Wildlife Sciences
http//www.cnr.uidaho.edu/rsgis/nr504.htm

• Mondays and Wednesdays 930 1120
• CNR 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

Grading Attendance Participation 60
Final Project Presentation 40
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Home Range and GIS
Eva Strand CNR Remote Sensing and GIS Lab
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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
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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

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Telemetry data or GPS collar
Tabular data in Excel (2003) .dbf or .txt format
can be directly imported to ArcGIS or ArcView
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Telemetry data or GPS collar
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Home Range Methods
Minimum Convex Polygon Harmonic
Mean Kernal Jennrich-Turner
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Minimum Convex Polygon

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

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Fixed kernel home range is currently recommended
Contours
The size of the kernel home range is sensitive
to the bandwidth value (h) used!
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Kernel Density Functions

• n number of locations
• h smoothing parameter
• d distance from the location x, y

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.a few assumptions

• Locations are independent
• Large enough sample size
• Smoothing parameter (kernel estimators)

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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 (lt 50)
• Better fit and less variability
• Normal or Reference method (href)
• Scaled-REF (href is multiplied by a fixed
  proportion)

Gitzen et al. 2006 Horne and Garton 2006
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Effect of the smoothing parameter
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Home Range Spatial Tools
Hawths Tools http//www.spatialecology.com/
Home Range Tool http//blue.lakeheadu.ca/hre/
Animal Movement http//www.absc.usgs.gov/glba/gi
stools/ Likelihood Cross Validation Tool (Jon
Horne) http//www.cnr.uidaho.edu/population_ecolog
y/animal_space_use.htm
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Hawths Tools
ArcGIS extension
www.spatialecology.com
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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 Users Manual and Tutorial Guide!!

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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 Interior U.S. Geological
Survey Alaska Biological Science Center Glacier
Bay Field Station
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Changes to ArcView
Buttons
Tools
Menus
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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 Users Manual

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