Occupancy modelling is a general set of techniques that can be used to assess the status of species at multiple points in an area (e.g., species presence/absence or distribution), and how that changes over time. Often the methods will take into account imperfect detection of the species.
In this video Darryl MacKenzie provides a brief overview of occupancy modelling, nothing that it is for more than just species presence/absence or species distribution modelling at a single point in time. Watch the clip for more details.
Some of the tools available for fitting occupancy models that Darryl refers to includes, Program PRESENCE, Program MARK, and the R packages RPresence (not on CRAN; available here), RMark, and unmarked. They can also be implemented in software such as WinBUGS and JAGS.
For a comprehensive synthesis, see the recent second edition of Darryl and colleagues occupancy book.
Proteus periodically runs occupancy modelling workshops and short courses around the globe. Check out our courses page for current offerings.
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