Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Optimizing Allocation Of Monitoring Effort Under Economic And Observational Constraints, Scott A. Field, Andrew J. Tyre, Hugh P. Possingham

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Efforts to design monitoring regimes capable of detecting population trends can be thwarted by observational and economic constraints inherent to most biological surveys. Ensuring that limited resources are allocated efficiently requires evaluation of statistical power for alternative survey designs. We simulated the process of data collection on a landscape, where we initiated declines over 3 sample periods in species of varying prevalence and detectability. Changing occupancy levels were estimated using a technique that accounted for effects of false-negative errors on survey data. Declines were identified within a frequentist statistical framework, but the significance level was set at an optimal level …