3D home range estimation

[Jamie Bolam]

Hi all!

I'm currently doing GPS collar research in Taiwan, which is a very mountainous and steep country in the central mountain range. I saw on the AKDE reference document (https://ctmm-initiative.github.io/ctmm/reference/akde.html) it refers to "VMM"; "An optional vertical ctmm object for 3D home-range calculation.".

Considering how mountainous my study areas are, it makes sense to account for topography in home range estimations, e.g. referring to Farhadinia et al 2019 https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/oik.06724 

I looked up 3D home range estimations in this google group but couldn't find anything that made clear sense to me - is there a chance we could have a walkthrough of 3D home range estimations etc as a vignette?

And if anyone has any advice, please let me know! Maths/algebra and coding is not my strongest area so I can get a bit confused with a lot of maths going on. 

Cheers!

Jamie

[Christen Fleming]

Hi Jamie,

The VMM option is more for species who's height/depth changes relative to the ground/sea. For topography, people typically estimate the x-y projected UD, render it on the topography, and then calculate the 3D surface area.

Best,

Chris