Integrating camera traps and autonomous recording units for wildlife monitoring in the Northwest Territories ...

• Main Author: Stewart, Laura Nicole
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2023
• Subjects: Northwest Territories
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0435530; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0435530

Monitoring animals in northern Canada is especially difficult, and there is a need for cost-effective methods and sampling designs. Camera traps and autonomous recording units (ARUs) are both promising tools, but they are rarely combined. This thesis focuses on two areas of integration: sampling design and habitat modeling. Data were collected in Ts’udé Nilįné Tuyeta, an Indigenous and Territorial Protected Area in the Northwest Territories. Hierarchical sampling designs, where sensors are deployed in clusters, are common for ARUs but rarely used for camera traps. I evaluated a hierarchical design for camera traps using resampling to determine the sample size required to estimate detection rate, habitat associations, and species richness across our study area. I found that 4 cameras per cluster across 35 clusters were sufficient for most of the metrics tested, but up to 13 cameras per cluster were needed to precisely estimate detection rate of rarer species. Cluster-scale species richness was unreliable even ...