Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Geographic principles applied to population dynamics: A spatially interpolated integrated population model

June 27, 2024
  1. A major impediment to wildlife conservation and management, from a quantitative perspective, is dealing with high degrees of uncertainty associated with population estimates. Integrated population models (IPMs) can help alleviate that challenge, but they are often limited to narrow spatial or temporal windows owing to the financial and logistical burdens of acquiring requisite datasets. To expand the spatiotemporal scope of practical IPM implementation, we developed a novel method that expresses demographic relatedness among sampled and unsampled locations using geographic principles of spatial autocorrelation.
  2. We interpolated demographic parameters at unsampled locations using parameter estimates from data-informed locations. Errors attributable to the interpolative process were corrected using a joint likelihood and locally recorded count data (‘cheaper’ and broadly distributed). We evaluated the spatially interpolated IPM (SIIPM) for precision and accuracy under variable levels of spatial autocorrelation using simulated data and a Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation (LOOCV) technique. Conventional IPMs and state-space models (SSM) were fit to the same simulated datasets to provide a comparative assessment of the novel method. In a final, empirical demonstration we fit the SIIPM to data collected from Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; sage-grouse) populations located in Nevada, U.S.A. during 2013–2021.
  3. SIIPMs outperformed conventional IPMs when fit to data possessing moderate-to-high levels of spatial autocorrelation. Under moderate levels of autocorrelation, the average improvement in parameter estimation was 13.6% for survival, 65.3% for recruitment and 23.7% for rate of population change (𝜆). When spatial autocorrelation was low, the SIIPM still outperformed contemporary approaches in areas that were geographically close (
Publication Year 2024
Title Geographic principles applied to population dynamics: A spatially interpolated integrated population model
DOI 10.1111/2041-210X.14334
Authors Brian G. Prochazka, Peter S. Coates, Shawn T. O’Neil, Shawn P. Espinosa, Cameron L. Aldridge
Publication Type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Series Title Methods in Ecology and Evolution
Index ID 70255930
Record Source USGS Publications Warehouse
USGS Organization Western Ecological Research Center
Was this page helpful?