A utilization distribution is a

probability distribution In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomeno ...

giving the probability density that an animal is found at a given point in space. It is estimated from data sampling the location of an individual or individuals in space over a period of time using, for example,

telemetry Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek roots ''tele'', "remote", and ' ...

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

based methods. Estimation of utilization distribution was traditionally based on

histogram A histogram is an approximate representation of the distribution of numerical data. The term was first introduced by Karl Pearson. To construct a histogram, the first step is to " bin" (or " bucket") the range of values—that is, divide the ent ...

s but newer

nonparametric Nonparametric statistics is the branch of statistics that is not based solely on Statistical parameter, parametrized families of probability distributions (common examples of parameters are the mean and variance). Nonparametric statistics is based ...

methods based on Fourier transformations,

kernel density In statistics, kernel density estimation (KDE) is the application of kernel smoothing for probability density estimation, i.e., a non-parametric method to estimate the probability density function of a random variable based on '' kernels'' as ...

and local convex hull methods have been developed. The typical application for this distribution is estimating the

home range A home range is the area in which an animal lives and moves on a periodic basis. It is related to the concept of an animal's territory which is the area that is actively defended. The concept of a home range was introduced by W. H. Burt in 1943. H ...

distribution of animals. According to Lichti & Swihart (2011), kernel density methods provided, in many cases, less biased home-range area estimates compared to convex hull methods.

References

Types of probability distributions {{Statistics-stub

See also

References