Parameter Estimation Exercises and Data Sets
Perhaps you are teaching a course on estimation of demographic parameters, or perhaps you would like examples to accompany the Powell/Gale book... Here are exercises I use to teach NRES 433/833 Wildlife Management Techniques and NRES 880 Vertebrate Population Analysis at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. You are welcome to browse and use the data sets and class exercises here. Over the years, I've modified exercises from my colleagues (with permission), and some of the data sets are 'traditional' data sets that have been used around the world to teach parameter estimation. Others are my own, and you are welcome to them. If you like them or find errors in them, please let me know!
Data sets: Go here to a OneDrive/Sharepoint folder to download all the input files you need for these exercises.
Lately, I emerged to join the future and now also have RMark code for most of these exercises. It is available in a folder within the link above. My exercises are still built for direction ins MARK, as I really like (for teaching purposes) the flow of thought about model structure from using good ol' program MARK. So there.
Closed Populations: population size
A small mammal data set from an eastern Iowa forest preserve and another exercise based on a painted turtle data set from a pond in western Nebraska.
Rodent data set (INP)
Painted turtle data set (INP)
CJS: apparent survival
The world famous European Dipper data set (Lebreton et al. 1992). Very cool, territorial birds along mountain streams.
Data set (INP)
Recovery: waterfowl survival
A decade of Nebraska Canada goose bandings; data set from Powell et al. (2003). Test for male and female survival.
Data set (INP)
Known fate: radio-telemetry survival
The well-known Conroy black duck data set. for Kaplan Meier-type analysis. Complete in Excel and then Program MARK.
Data set (INP)
Lab Report
Known fate: nest survival
A Nebraska data set for red-winged blackbird nests and tests for effects of wetland size. And, a Nebraska ring-necked pheasant nest survival exercise to explore the use of covariates.
Data set, blackbirds (INP)
Data set, pheasants (INP)
Multistate: movement, survival
Data from Alaska on brood movements of black brant. Time has passed, and I am not sure whose online course provided this data set. From Lindberg and Sedinger (1998).
Data set, black brant (INP)
An exercise and a portion of a data set from the late Mary Bomberger Brown. Double-observer of least terns along a section of the Platte River in Nebraska.
Data set (INP)
Double observer surveys
N-mixture models
A spotted towhee data set from a NPS-funded project along the Niobrara River in Nebraska, on the TNC's Niobrara Valley Preserve.
Data set (INP)
Removal models
An exercise modified from one designed by Gary White. Brook trout in a stream in Colorado.
Data set (INP)
Distance-based surveys
Meadowlark data from the Nebraska Sandhills collected by Silka Kempema, one of my early grad students.
Occupancy
A presence-absence set of data for black terns in Wisconsin wetlands from my friend David Shealer at Loras University in Dubuque, Iowa.Served with permission. .
Data set (INP)
LARKIN POWELL
University of Nebraska-Lincoln