This project is investigating the habitat ecology and distribution of Bathurst caribou relative to the interactions of climate change, fire, snow conditions, and the density of caribou on the winter range.  Species-distribution models are an effective tool for monitoring and mapping patterns of habitat use, and show promise for conservation of animals with variable life histories. We used environmental variables to predict the occurrence of Bathurst caribou across both early and late winter range.

• We used a Resource Selection Function (RSF) to scale the observed distribution of caribou to the relative probability of selecting a habitat patch.
• First, we developed a set of candidate models to investigate factors that might influence caribou distribution during winter: snow depth, patch age and vegetation type, distance to small and large fires, and distance to water.
• We used an information-theoretic approach called Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) to select the best model from the set of candidates and applied this global model to both the early and late winter caribou locations.
• We used matched logistic regression to test for selection or avoidance of habitats, and k-fold cross validation to evaluatemodel performance. 
 

Project nearing completion April 2010.