1. NR505 GIS Applications in Wildlife Sciences
Mondays and Wednesdays 9:30 – 11:20
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 %
Final Project Presentation %

2. CNR Remote Sensing and GIS Lab
Home Range and GIS
Eva Strand
CNR Remote Sensing and GIS Lab

3. Wildlife Techniques Manual
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

4. 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

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

6. Telemetry data or GPS collar

7. Minimum Convex Polygon
Home Range Methods
Minimum Convex Polygon
Harmonic Mean
Kernal
Jennrich-Turner

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

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

10. Kernel Density Functions
n – number of locations h – smoothing parameter d – distance from the location x, y

11. ….a few assumptions Locations are independent Large enough sample size
Smoothing parameter (kernel estimators)

12. 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. 2006
Horne and Garton 2006

13. Effect of the smoothing parameter

14. Home Range Spatial Tools
Hawth’s Tools
Home Range Tool
Animal Movement
Likelihood Cross Validation Tool (Jon Horne)

15. Hawth’s Tools
ArcGIS extension

16. 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!!

18. 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= Gout G = Garbage
U.S. Department of Interior
U.S. Geological Survey
Alaska Biological Science Center
Glacier Bay Field Station

19. Changes to ArcView
Buttons
Tools
Menus

20. Readings – home range
Bookhout TA (editor) Research and Mangement Techniques for Wildlife and Habitats pp , The Wildlife Society, Bethesda , Maryland .
Horne JS and EO Garton Likelihood cross-validation versus least squares cross-validation for choosing the smoothing parameter in kernel home-range analysis, Journal of Wildlife Management 70(3):
Gitzen RA, JJ Millspaugh, and BJ Kernohan, Bandwidth selection for fixed-kernel analysis of animal utilization distributions, Journal of Wildlife Management 70(5):
Home Range Tool User’s Manual