Probabilty Models

Planning Tools: Probability Models

Another modeling approach that we have explored allows us to predict bird occurrence and abundance across large landscapes.
We first calculate species specific habitat occurrence probabilities in the five regions of our study area based on our point counts.
These probability distributions are applied across the landscape to predict species occurrence as well as relative abundance.
We have applied the probabililty based model to our large study areas and the results from actual bird surveys and prediction are excellent.
The probability based models will be applied to large areas of northern Minnesota to get estimates of current breeding bird abundances and to predict future populations if forests are altered.