Using space to event modeling to estimate density of multiple species in northeastern Washington

McMurry, Sierra; Moeller, Anna K.; Goerz, James W.; Robinson, Hugh S.

doi:10.1002/wsb.1390

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

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“…(2022), and McMurry et al. (2023) estimated the densities of carnivores and ungulate species using cameras placed on roads or game trails and a sampling window between 2 and 30 sec. Notably, these authors reported using viewshed areas of 45, 106, and 78.7 m 2 , respectively, which is much larger than most of the measured viewshed areas we found in our sites (see Table S4.1).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, we observed that despite violating multiple assumptions of the STE model, several studies reported good alignment between STE and independently derived density estimates. For instance, Loonam et al (2021), Ausband et al (2022), andMcMurry et al (2023) estimated the densities of carnivores and ungulate species using cameras placed on roads or game trails and a sampling window between 2 and 30 sec. Notably, these authors reported using viewshed areas of 45, 106, and 78.7 m 2 , respectively, which is much larger than most of the measured viewshed areas we found in our sites (see Table S4.1).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This may have limited its popularity among field biologists and led researchers to test its application on motion‐triggered cameras placed non‐randomly to maximize the detection of rare species such as the mountain lion Puma concolor (Loonam et al., 2021), gray wolf Canis lupus (Ausband et al., 2022), and dhole Cuon alpinus (Punjabi et al., 2022). Previous studies have applied the STE model to motion trigger cameras using viewshed areas that do not account for imperfect detection probability (Ausband et al., 2022; Loonam et al., 2021; McMurry et al., 2023), non‐instantaneous sampling windows of detection, ranging from 2 to 60 sec (Ausband et al., 2022; Loonam et al., 2021; McMurry et al., 2023; Waller, 2022), and targeted rather than random placement of camera traps (Ausband et al., 2022; Loonam et al., 2021; McMurry et al., 2023; Punjabi et al., 2022). These conditions violate important assumptions of the STE model and might impact the accuracy of density estimates (see Moeller et al., 2018; Table S1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Estimating animal density using the Space‐to‐Event model and bootstrap resampling with motion‐triggered camera‐trap data

Lyet

Waller

Chambert

et al. 2023

Remote Sens Ecol Conserv

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Over the past few decades, the use of camera‐traps has revolutionized our ability to monitor populations of wild terrestrial mammals. While methods to estimate abundance from individually‐identifiable animals are well‐established, they are mostly restricted to species with clear natural markings or else necessitate invasive and often costly animal tagging campaigns. Estimating abundance or density from unmarked animals remains challenging. Several models recently developed to deal with this issue are promising, but are not widely used by field ecologists. Here, we developed a framework for applying the Space‐To‐Event (STE) model—originally designed to be used with time‐lapse images—on motion‐triggered camera‐trap data. Our approach involves performing bootstrap resampling on the photographic dataset to generate multiple datasets that are then used as input to the STE model. We tested our approach on 29 datasets, including 17 ungulate species from eight sites, in six different countries and various ecosystems. Then, we conducted a regression analysis to evaluate how variations in ecological and sampling conditions across studies affected the bias and precision of our STE density estimates. Our study shows that with a bootstrap resampling approach and information on animal activity and effective detection distances to animals, the STE model can be used to analyze motion‐trigger datasets and provide population density estimates that are similar to those from other methods. We found that measuring the camera viewshed was critical to prevent major negative biases in density estimates. Moreover, using a 1‐s sampling window was important to avoid the positive bias that results from violating the instantaneous‐sampling assumption. We found that precision increased with greater sampling effort and higher density populations. Based on these results, we highlight several issues from past studies that have applied the original timelapse‐based STE to motion‐trigger datasets, issues that our bootstrap resampling approach addresses. We caution that the STE model, whether applied to timelapse or motion‐triggered datasets, relies on strict assumptions. Any violations of these assumptions, such as non‐instantaneous sampling or the application of angle and distance of detection provided by the camera manufacturer, can cause biases in multiple directions that may be difficult to differentiate.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%