IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Pollock, K.H.; Nichols, J.D.; Karanth, K.U. | |
| Estimating demographic parameters | |
| 2012 Book Chapter | |
Recent assessments present an alarming picture of ongoing carnivore population decreases worldwide and highlight the urgent need for targeted population assessments as a basis for mounting appropriate conservation responses (Ceballos et al. 2005; Schipper et al. 2008). On the other hand, carnivore research and management must address "problem carnivores" that threaten human interests (Treves and Karanth 2003), and the regulated harvest of carnivores as furbearers. Furthermore, investigators are interested in demographic processes simply to satisfy scientific curiosity. A sound understanding of demographic processes is critical to the success of all such endeavors. In the real world, demographic processes are "spatially explicit" in the sense that they are influenced by location-specific ecological features and human impacts. These site-specific ecological processes help us understand demographic processes better. Reliable assessments of different "state variables" such as carnivore numbers or distribution at any location or time, and of "vital rates" that drive changes in these state variables (Williams et al. 2002b), form the subject of this chapter. In our view this "parameter estimation" is at the core of gaining reliable knowledge of how carnivore populations function across time and space. |
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