Graduation Year
2018
Date of Submission
4-2018
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Mathematics
Reader 1
Mark Huber
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2018 Maia Adar
OCLC Record Number
1084668386
Abstract
Understanding what factors influence wildlife movement allows landscape planners to make informed decisions that benefit both animals and humans. New quantitative methods, such as step-selection functions, provide valuable objective analyses of wildlife connectivity. This paper provides a framework for creating a step-selection function and demonstrates its use in a case study. The first section provides a general introduction about wildlife connectivity research. The second section explains the math behind the step-selection function using a simple example. The last section gives the results of a step-selection model for African buffalo in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. Buffalo were found to avoid fences, rivers, and anthropogenic land use; however, there was great variation in individual buffalo's preferences.
Recommended Citation
Adar, Maia, "Step-Selection Functions for Modeling Animal Movement -- Case Study: African Buffalo" (2018). CMC Senior Theses. 1938.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1938
