Abstract
With this scholarship my aim is to advance my analytical capacity to study habitat use, behavior of free-ranging animals and landscape ecology. During the proposed project I create an impact and risk assessment on several spatial scales with respect to human infrastructure e.g. road networks, buildings, and power lines in Sweden using moose as a case study. Important is the broader spatial context to avoid interference influenced by local, site-specific features. I will test a set of hypotheses based on ecological theories of animal resource selection, prey anti-predator behavior, and landscape ecology to assess the effects of both environmental and human factors on moose behavior in different environments. My working hypothesis is that I expect moose to show avoidance behavior (anti-predator behavior) towards human presence (predator), resulting in a ´landscape of fear´ in space and time. Moose is an excellent case study, because it is a geographical wide-spread species that range over large spatial scales, and in Scandinavia, experience intense human impact. I will analyze moose GPS location data from different regional sites covering Sweden to address the impact of infrastructure on moose space use using resource utilization function in relation to infrastructure and environmental features. To address the spatiotemporal risk for wildlife road-crossings, I will develop a general model concerning risk assessment using a multi-year data set of moose GPS location data.
Sweden