Ji, W. & Jeske, C. Spatial modeling of the geographic distribution of wildlife populations: a case study in the lower Mississippi River region. Ecological Modelling 132, 95-104 (2000).

This paper presents a case study for using GIS to take a visual approach to spatial modeling and analysis in wildlife management.  By integrating spatial data from radio-tagged Northern Pintails wintering along the Lower Mississippi River with environmental resource records from the area they were able to create a model for predicting pintail movement and distribution that could be viewed through ARC/INFO GIS, rather than being strictly numerical.  The field data derived from the radio-tagged pintails, location for each telemetry survey done was combined with attributes unique to each bird (sex, time/date/location of capture, age) in ARC/INFO GIS to create vector data maps.  This point data was integrated with detailed information about habitat types in the study area and environmental conditions favored by pintails in both summer and winter, and all data layers were related to one another by geography.  After assessing which environmental factors would have the most influence on pintail distribution, these assumptions were layered against actual pintail locations to search for patterns in specific demographic groups found in each habitat type.  Further, the researchers created custom GIS interfaces to provide them with the relevant information for each hypothesis testing.  This paper is germane to the ways in which I will be analyzing the field data collected for my thesis.  There are concept models included in the paper that will assist my decision making process when developing my own spatial analysis models in ArcGIS.