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
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
