Chapter 13 - Integrated Modeling of Habitat and Occupancy Dynamics

Abstract

Species often exhibit preferences for certain habitat features such that species occurrence is a function of a unit's habitat. However habitat on the landscape will often be dynamic, changing through time via processes such as vegetation succession, human activities, and environmental variation. When habitat is dynamic, it will frequently be useful to partition species occurrence dynamics into components associated with habitat versus other factors. Solely focusing on species occurrence is likely to yield an inadequate descriptor of the system's state, as similar patterns may have very different meanings with respect to system well-being. In this chapter, we discuss methods that model system dynamics using two interrelated components, species occurrence dynamics that depend on habitat and habitat dynamics that (may) depend on species occurrence. Utilizing the multi-state, multi-season occupancy model framework described in Chapter 9, we highlight the flexible nature of this model to identify important factors for the separate but interrelated processes of habitat and occupancy dynamics. This enables a number of biologically interesting questions about these interrelationships, including species response to ecological succession, natural disturbance frequencies, climate change, and habitat loss and fragmentation associated with human activities. This modeling approach also provides a framework enabling predictions to be made about the future distribution of a species in the face of such dynamics.