New manuscript accepted in Ecology on spatio-temporal methods for estimating colonization dynamics

Williams, P. J., M. B. Hooten, J. N. Womble, G. G. Esslinger, M. R. Bower, and T. J. Hefley. In Press. An integrated data model to estimate spatio-temporal occupancy, abundance, and colonization dynamics. Ecology.

Abstract: Ecological invasions and colonizations occur dynamically through space and time. Estimating the distribution and abundance of colonizing species is critical for efficient management or conservation. We describe a statistical framework for simultaneously estimating spatio-temporal occupancy and abundance dynamics of a colonizing species. Our method accounts for several issues that are common when modeling spatio-temporal ecological data including: multiple levels of detection probability, multiple data sources, and computational limitations that occur when making fine-scale inference over a large spatio-temporal domain. We apply the model to estimate the colonization dynamics of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) in Glacier Bay, in southeastern Alaska.