A new index for measuring perpendicularity of animal movements in relation to patch boundaries

Ken A. Aho, Ryan A. Long, John G. Kie and R. Terry Bowyer

Ecological Modelling, 2010, vol. 221, issue 17, 2003-2007

Abstract: We introduce a new index for measuring perpendicularity of animal movements with respect to a boundary (e.g., a habitat patch edge), and provide a computer algorithm for its calculation. Our index, η, improves on an approach that measures perpendicularity with respect to a fixed boundary direction. This is because η accounts for moment-to-moment trajectories relative to nearest-neighbor boundary attributes at the scale of an animal's movement. Our algorithm prp calculates η efficiently and accurately with both synthetic data and large telemetry datasets. In addition, we have included routines in prp which account for scenarios inherently problematic to perpendicularity estimators.

Keywords: Perpendicularity; Patch; Animal movement; R (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:221:y:2010:i:17:p:2003-2007

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2010.06.006

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