A Bayesian approach to evaluating habitat for woodland caribou in north-central British Columbia.

Abstract

Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) populations are in decline throughout much of their range. With increasing development of caribou habitat, tools are required to make management decisions to support effective conservation of caribou and their range. We developed a series of Bayesian belief networks to evaluate conservation policy scenarios applied to caribou seasonal range recovery areas. We demonstrate the utility of the networks to articulate ecological understanding among stakeholders, to clarify and explicitly depict threats to seasonal range values, and to show how simulated forecasts of spatially-explicit seasonal range values can be assessed against landscape potential and compared to range values under natural disturbances.

Citation

McNay, R.S.; Marcot, B.G.; Brumovsky, V.; Ellis, R. 2006. A Bayesian approach to evaluating habitat for woodland caribou in north-central British Columbia. Canadian journal of forest research. 36: 3117-3133