Download or read book Influence of Disturbances on the Movements of Female Woodland Caribou Rangifer Tarandus Caribou Across Multiple Spatiotemporal Scales written by D. Beauchesne and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Resource Selection Predation Risk and Population Dynamics of Woodland Caribou written by Nicholas James DeCesare and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) have experienced population declines and local extirpations across North America. Human disturbance has caused caribou declines indirectly through changes to apparent competition dynamics within the predator-prey community. Apparent competition occurs as a negative indirect interaction between prey species, mediated by their direct interactions with a shared predator. I first review apparent competition, and show that across many endangered species including woodland caribou, human disturbance often causes an asymmetric tilt to the balance among prey species. Landscape disturbance such as forest harvest and energy development have created early seral-stage forests and linear features across the landscape of west-central Alberta. I studied the effects of landscape disturbance on the predator-prey dynamics of woodland caribou, wolves (Canis lupus) and other ungulate prey species in this region. I examined spatial patterns of resource selection by caribou, wolf predation risk, adult female caribou survival and, ultimately, population trend for 9 woodland caribou populations. Caribou avoided disturbance across all scales of resource selection, though avoidance of forestry cut-blocks was strongest at broad home range scales and avoidance of linear features was strongest at fine scales along caribou movement paths. Linear disturbances also increased predation risk by being selected as travel routes for hunting wolves, but did not increase the predation efficiency in terms of kills per time, as hypothesized. Rather, spatial changes in predation efficiency were largely driven by natural landscape heterogeneity. Avoidance by caribou and increased wolf predation risk in disturbed areas indicate functional habitat loss for caribou, yet these patterns alone do not necessarily imply a demographic impact. Spatial analysis of factors influencing adult female survival indicated that caribou resource selection was broadly correlated with survival, but also that wolf predation risk was an additional mortality risk beyond that perceived by caribou. This failure of caribou to non-ideally avoid predation risk may explain my final analysis showing significant and multi-year declines for all populations in west-central Alberta. Ultimately, if caribou conservation is to succeed, management must reverse the ultimate causes shifting the balance of apparent competition at both broad and fine scales across woodland caribou range.
Download or read book Characteristics of Spring Movements of Woodland Caribou Rangifer Tarandus Caribou in Two High Risk Ranges in Southeastern Manitoba written by Tim Davis and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Influence of Disturbance and Potential Predator Effects on the Persistence of Boreal Woodland Caribou Rangifer Tarandus Caribou in Manitoba written by Douglas Schindler and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Multi scale Behavioural Approach to Understanding the Movements of Woodland Caribou written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plasticity in Selection Strategies of Woodland Caribou Rangifer Tarandus Caribou During Winter and Calving written by David D. Gustine and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Woodland caribou may be an important indicator' or focal species for management agencies because they require large areas to persist and are sensitive to both direct and indirect forms of disturbance. Prior to industrial development in northern regions, it is important to acquire baseline information on areas that are important to local 'herds' as well as to identify physiological and ecological mechanisms of resource selection. I used global positioning system (GPS) data from caribou {Rangifer tarandus caribou), wolves {Canis lupus), and grizzly bears {Ursus arctos), and satellite imagery, resource selection functions, and cause-specific mortality data from 50 caribou neonates to define calving and wintering areas of woodland caribou in northern British Columbia. I identified scale-dependant mechanisms of selection relative to predation risk (calving, summer, winter, and late winter) and forage availability (calving and summer), and energetic costs of movement (winter and late winter) at 2 spatial scales, and quantified the variation in responses to these mechanisms among individual caribou. In all seasons, caribou selected habitats in a hierarchical fashion, and exhibited high variation among individuals. Three unique calving areas, or calving strategies, were defined for the Greater Besa Prophet area; each calving area had different attributes of risk and forage. During calving, spatial separation from areas of high wolf risk was important to parturient females as was access to areas of high vegetative change (i.e., forage quality); animals made trade-off decisions between minimizing the risk of predation and securing forage to address the high nutritional demands of lactation. Calf survival through the first 2 months of life ranged from 54% in 2002 to 79% in 2003. A total of 19 of 50 neonates died during the summers, of which 17 were by predation: wolverines (age of calves 14 d) and wolves (age of calves 18 d) each killed 5 calves. Movements away from calving sites (>1 km) peaked during the third week of life and increased the odds of a neonate surviving by 196%. These movements coincided with a change in vegetative phenology and the high energetic demands of lactation. During winter and late winter, minimizing the energetic costs of movement was the most important parameter in the selection of resources at a smaller spatial scale defined by seasonal movement, whereas Individual caribou showed increased sensitivity to the components of risk at a larger scale of the home range. Variation in the selection of resources by individuals was high, but some similarities facilitated using pooled use/availability data to model resource selection. These pooled models, however, collapsed important biological variation in the selection of resources, limiting biological interpretation of selection models. Variation in the selection of resources among individuals (i.e., plasticity) during all times of the year may be an important life-history strategy for woodland caribou to decrease their predictability on the landscape to major predators. Identifying and maintaining this variation within selection strategies is an important step towards determining the ability of caribou populations to persist in the presence of environmental and anthropogenic disturbance."--Pages ii-iii.
Download or read book Calving Behavior of Boreal Caribou in a Multi predator Multi use Landscape written by Craig Allen DeMars and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The boreal ecotype of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) is federally listed as Threatened due to population declines throughout its distribution. High mortality rates of neonate calves (≤ 4 weeks old) due to predation are a key demographic factor contributing to population declines and increasing predation has been linked to landscape disturbance within and adjacent to caribou range. To inform management strategies for improving rates of calf survival, I investigated the space use and habitat requirements of female boreal caribou during calving. Space is integral to the calving behaviour of boreal caribou with parturient females dispersing widely on the landscape, a behaviour hypothesized to reduce predation risk. I assessed potential evolutionary drivers of dispersion using simulation analyses that tracked caribou-wolf encounters during the calving season. I specifically assessed whether dispersion decreased predation risk by: (i) increasing predator search time, (ii) reducing predator encounters because individuals are inconspicuous relative to groups, or (iii) eliminating the risk of multiple kills per predator encounter of caribou groups. Simulation outputs show that dispersion only becomes favourable when differential detectability based on group size is combined with the risk of multiple kills per encounter. This latter effect, however, is likely the primary mechanism driving parturient females to disperse because group detectability effects are presumably constant year round. Simulation outputs further demonstrate that if females become increasingly clumped - a pattern that may result if caribou avoid disturbance in highly impacted landscapes - then calf survival is negatively affected. To specifically identify key attributes of calving habitat, I used a three-step process. First, I identified GPS locations where females were accompanied by neonate calves by developing two novel methods for predicting parturition events and neonate survival status based on female movement patterns. These methods predicted parturition with near certainty and provided reasonable estimates of neonate survival, which I further augmented with aerial survey data. Using the partitioned GPS location data, I then developed resource selection functions using a generalized mixed effects modelling approach that explicitly maintained the individual as the sampling and comparative unit. I discriminated calving areas from other areas within caribou range by conducting multiple comparisons based on season and maternal status. These comparisons show that parturient females shifted from bog-dominated winter ranges to calving areas dominated by fens. In general, reducing predation risk was a dominant factor driving calving habitat selection although the shift to fen landscapes indicates that females may be trading off increased predation risk to access higher quality forage because fens are riskier than bogs. As a third step, I explicitly evaluated calving habitat quality by relating maternal selection and use of resources to the probability of neonate survival. These analyses included spatially explicit covariates of predator-specific risk. Surprisingly, variation in landscape disturbance had minimal effect on calf survival; rather, survival was best explained by predation risk from black bears (Ursus americanus). Collectively, my findings yield important insights into the habitat requirements of boreal caribou during calving and highlight that management actions aimed at improving calving habitat quality will need to be conducted at large spatial scales.
Download or read book A Multi scale Behavioural Approach to Understanding the Movements of Woodland Caribou written by Christopher Jack Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Multi scale Behavioural Approach to Understanding the Movements of Woodland Caribou written by Chris Jack Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book How Alternative Landscapes in the Boreal Forest Impact Woodland Caribou Using a Model of Animal Movement Perception and Memory written by Brianna Collis and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The boreal ecotype of woodland caribou, Rangifer tarandus caribou, is a threatened species in Canada. Their decline is complex, but cumulative effects of anthropogenic activity - including habitat alteration and loss from economic activities - are implicated. This study investigates how a projection of current trends impacts caribou using alternative landscapes in northern Ontario. Landscapes are compared with an empirically-parameterized individual-based movement model to identify how landscape change impacts boreal woodland caribou. Results indicate that a business- as-usual landscape will continue to negatively impact woodland caribou persistence and population growth, as well as affect how caribou use the landscape with respect to movement and landcover occupation. Neither the existing landscape nor a business- as-usual projection stopped caribou decline, and caribou searched more-disturbed landcover types in the business-as-usual landscape. Results have implications for species conservation, landscape planning, boreal land-use practices, spatial ecology, and applied landscape ecology's role in the recovery of imperilled species.
Download or read book Assessing Cumulative Human Impacts on Northern Woodland Caribou with Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Selection Functions written by Jean Lieppert Polfus and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) are federally listed and declining across Canada because of the cumulative impacts of human infrastructure development. The Atlin northern mountain herd, in the territory of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation (TRTFN), British Columbia, is less affected by development than southern herds. However, recent low productivity in this herd suggests that the impacts of development (i.e., roads, mines, cabins and towns) may be accumulating. To predict the cumulative impact of human development on the Atlin herd, we developed seasonal resource selection functions (RSF) at 2 spatial scales with data from 10 global positioning system collared caribou. We modeled habitat selection and assessed cumulative effects by estimating the zone of influence (ZOI) around several types of human development. At the landscape and home range scale caribou avoided the ZOI and selected pine-lichen forests in winter and alpine habitats in summer. Approximately 8 and 2% of high quality habitat was lost due to avoidance of current development at the landscape scale in winter and summer, respectively. Future development of access roads to 2 mines would cause a further loss of 1% of high quality habitat. Negotiating the complex political dynamics that surround caribou conservation often requires new approaches to management and recovery planning. The incorporation of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) with Western science could improve efficiency of management decisions and enhance the validity and robustness of ecological inferences. Therefore, we evaluated how well RSF and TEK habitat models predicted current woodland caribou observations and compared the spatial predictions of both modeling approaches. Habitat suitability index models were generated from TEK interviews with TRTFN members. Though comparison of habitat ranks between the 2 models showed spatial discrepancies in some cases, overall, both approaches had high model performance and successfully predicted caribou occurrence. Our results suggest TEK can be used to identify caribou habitat and is a useful approach in northern ecosystems that frequently lack long-term ecological data that are needed to inform management decisions. Combining TEK-based habitat suitability index models with cumulative effects assessments will facilitate recovery goals for woodland caribou across northern Canada.
Download or read book Modelling the Effect of Landscape Features on Woodland Caribou Movement and Population Growth in Ontario written by Boyan Liu and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The suitability of an animal's local environment is expected to influence patterns of movement and population growth rate (lambda). Landscape suitability can accordingly be estimated, based on the relative frequency and spatial distribution of good versus poor areas. This framework can be used to evaluate the landscape suitability of 14 woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) ranges in Ontario and relate it to projected inter-range differences in movement and lambda; calculated using individual-based movement trajectories. The caribou movement simulation model predicted that average rates of caribou displacement should decrease with increasing forage variability and decreasing variability in moose abundance. The caribou population viability analysis model predicted that caribou population growth should decrease with increasing density of both wolves and moose, the wolves' primary prey. These model predictions suggest that caribou movement and lambda could respond differently to spatial variation in food availability and predation risk.
Download or read book Landscape Composition and Configuration Influences Woodland Caribou Calf Recruitment written by Sara C. McCarthy and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Resource Selection by Animals written by B.F. Manly and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-05-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We have written this book as a guide to the design and analysis of field studies of resource selection, concentrating primarily on statistical aspects of the comparison of the use and availability of resources of different types. Our intended audience is field ecologists in general and, in particular, wildlife and fisheries biologists who are attempting to measure the extent to which real animal populations are selective in their choice of food and habitat. As such, we have made no attempt to address those aspects of theoretical ecology that are concerned with how animals might choose their resources if they acted in an optimal manner. The book is based on the concept of a resource selection function (RSF), where this is a function of characteristics measured on resourceunits such that its value for a unit is proportional to the probability of that unit being used. We argue that this concept leads to a unified theory for the analysis and interpretation of data on resource selection and can replace many ad hoc statistical methods that have been used in the past.
Download or read book Seasonal Movements Habitat Utilization and Population Ecology of Woodland Caribou Rangifer Tarandus Caribou Gmelin in the Wallace Aikens Lake Region of Southeastern Manitoba written by William Richard Darby and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Influence of Weather on Movements and Migrations of Caribou written by Warren G. Eastland and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sociogenetics written by Amy Flasko and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecology -- Woodland Caribou.
