A comparison of multiple indicator kriging and area-to-point Poisson kriging for mapping patterns of herbivore species abundance in Kruger National Park, South Africa

摘要: Kruger National Park KNP, South Africa, provides protected habitats for the unique animals of African savannah. For past 40 years, annual aerial surveys herbivores have been conducted to aid management decisions based on 1 spatial distribution species throughout park and 2 total populations in a year. The are extremely time consuming costly. many whole was surveyed, but 1998 transect survey approach adopted. This is cheaper less leaves gaps data spatially. Also distance method currently employed by only gives estimates not their distribution. We compare ability multiple indicator kriging area-to-point Poisson accurately map park. A leave-one-out cross-validation indicates that makes poor number animals, particularly few large counts, as variograms such high thresholds pure nugget. applied prediction two types abundance data: density proportion given species. Both approaches had standardized mean absolute errors St. MAEs animal counts at least an order magnitude lower than kriging. density, 1, gave lowest most abundant proportion, 2, did Incorporating environmental into further reduced MAEs.