Embedding R in Windows applications, and executing R remotely

Using R to Analyze Space Use by Wildlife
Alan K Swanson, Jennifer W. Sheldon and Robert L. Crabtree
Yellowstone Ecosystem Research Center, Bozeman, Montana, USA.
Wildlife researchers have used a variety of ”black-box” computer programs
to generate bivariate pdf’s (known as utilization distributions in the wildlife
literature) from a spatial point pattern of animal relocations. These competing
programs often give conflicting results when used to estimate parameters of
wildlife space use such as home range area. The authors demonstrate the use of
two-dimensional kernel smoothing functions available in R to generate the pdf’s,
and then show how these pdf’s may be used to estimate various parameters.
Estimates made using gaussian kernels are compared to those derived using
quartic kernels, and the effect of sample size is examined. Various statistics for
comparing two bivariate pdf’s are presented. Bandwidth selection is discussed.