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Environmental Models of Cetacean Abundance: Reducing Uncertainty in Population Trends by Karin A. Forney is a Environmental Science article available to read on EtoBox.

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**Abstract:** Trends in population abundance are often used to monitor species affected by human activities. For highly mobile species in dynamic environments, however, such as cetaceans in the marine realm, natural variability can confound attempts to detect and interpret trends in abundance. Environmental variability can cause dramatic shifts in the distribution of cetaceans, and thus abundance estimates for a fixed region may be based on a different proportion of the population each time. This adds variability, decreasing statistical power to detect trends and introducing uncertainty whether apparent trends represent true changes in population size or merely reflect natural changes in the distribution of cetaceans. To minimize these problems, surveys ideally would be based on species‐specific design criteria that optimize sampling within all relevant habitat throughout a species' range. Our knowledge of cetacean habitats is limited, however, and financial and logistic constraints generally force those surveying cetacean abundance to include all species within a limited geographic region. Alternately, it may be possible to account for environmental variability analytically by inc

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Author

Karin A. Forney

Publisher

John Wiley and Sons; Wiley (Blackwell Publishing); Blackwell Publishing Inc.; Wiley (ISSN 0888-8892)

Published

2000

Language

EN

Field

Environmental Science (Physical Sciences)