elephant_farmers {ecoteach} | R Documentation |
Elephant Agricultural Use Metrics in Mara-Serengeti Ecosystem
Description
A dataset containing agricultural use metrics for 66 elephants in the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem in Kenya and Tanzania. The data were collected to characterize crop use tactics by elephants and to understand how elephants interact with agricultural areas. The dataset includes metrics such as mean agricultural use, maximum use from a moving average, and the difference between mean and max use. These metrics were used to classify agricultural use tactics for each elephant using Gaussian mixture models. The dataset contains individual-year agricultural use metrics, space use, and elephant metadata, with tactic classifications for both lifetime tracks and individual years.
Usage
elephant_farmers
Format
A data frame with 202 rows and 17 variables:
- subject_name
Individual elephant ID
- tactic.aggregate
Tactic classification for lifetime GPS track of individual: Rare, Sporadic, Seasonal, or Habitual
- season.year
Year cuts (cut date April 1 of each year)
- tactic.season
Tactic classification for the associated year: Rare, Sporadic, Seasonal, or Habitual
- year.begin
Data start date for a given year
- year.end
Data stop date for a given year
- n.fixes
Number of GPS relocations for an individual in a given year
- year.mean
Mean agricultural use for a given year
- year.max
Maximum agricultural use from a 90-day moving average for a given year
- year.delta
Difference in mean and max agricultural use for a given year
- year.mcp.area
MCP homerange for an individual in a given year
- mu.daily.disp
Mean daily displacement for an individual in a given year
- subject_sex
Sex of the individual (male or female)
- subject_ageClass
Age class of individual (young adult or mature adult)
- centroid.dist.meters
Distance from centroid of homerange to agriculture (meters)
- tactic.prev
Tactic of the previous year (NA if no previous tactic could be confirmed)
- tactic.change
Whether an individual changed tactics ("Changed") or stayed the same ("No change")
Source
Hahn, Nathan (2021). Elephant agricultural use metrics in Mara-Serengeti ecosystem. Dryad Digital Repository. doi:10.5061/DRYAD.RN8PK0PBN
Examples
# Load the dataset
data(elephant_farmers)
# Basic exploration
head(elephant_farmers)
summary(elephant_farmers)
# Examine distribution of tactics by sex
table(elephant_farmers$subject_sex, elephant_farmers$tactic.season)
# Compare agricultural use metrics across tactics
boxplot(year.mean ~ tactic.season, data = elephant_farmers,
main = "Mean Agricultural Use by Tactic",
ylab = "Mean Agricultural Use")
# Examine tactic changes over time
# Count how many elephants changed tactics vs stayed the same
table(elephant_farmers$tactic.change, useNA = "ifany")
# Look at relationship between distance to agriculture and tactic
boxplot(centroid.dist.meters ~ tactic.season, data = elephant_farmers,
main = "Distance to Agriculture by Tactic",
ylab = "Distance (meters)")