Identification of intensive space use from movement data

With Simon Benhamou (CEFE Montpellier), we devised a method to analyze animal movement data (e.g. GPS tracks) and highlight the areas where animals spend most of their time (pdf here). We used a statistical segmentation method (Lavielle 2005) to cut a long and heterogeneous movement path into homogeneous pieces, based on an index of local space use. We dubbed the method the 'Residence Time Method' because, at any point along the animal's path, our index of local space use is the total time spent by the animal in a circle centred on its current location.

The method is now available in the widely used statistical software R thanks to Clement Calenge (ONCFS). It is included in the R package adehabitatLT that includes many useful tools to analyze movement data.