| Summary: | Master's Project (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2023 Estimating caribou herd size from aerial telemetry surveys is predominantly achieved through the use of the Rivest estimator. Despite the underlying assumptions of the Rivest estimator, it is being used to estimate caribou herd sizes in Alaska and the northern Canadian provinces. The goal of this paper is to create simulated herds as a way to see how well the Rivest estimator works. In an attempt to examine how well this estimator works through the homogeneous model of the Phase II sampling, we estimate the herd sizes of caribou herd groups from the Western Arctic, Teshekpuk, and Mulchatna herds in Alaska by simulating group sizes and detected collars from the truncated continuous power law and the Poisson distributions. The multinomial distribution was used during the simulation to ensure that the assumption of random mixing of collared caribou amongst the rest of the population is met. It was found that the Rivest estimate of the herd size closely matched between the original and simulated data over 80% of the time, hence, can conclude that the estimator works with simulated herds.
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