Case study and dataset
Download our example dataset, or use your own
Chinese water deer
Our hands-on exercises use data from Yancheng Nature Reserve on the eastern coast of China’s Jiangsu Province, around 120.5°E, 33.6°N. The study investigated the diversity and health of the wildlife population in that coastal wetland reserve
We’ll be working with observations of Chinese water deer Hydropotes inermis inermis that were collected with line transect surveys
Download the data
Here are files of the field data for our hands-on exercises, taken from the line transect surveys for Chinese water deer
- Deer sightings from the survey
- Information on the length of each transect
Download the files to your computer and make a mental note of the folder you save them in
Before you proceed, open up the files in a spreadsheet programme or text editor and take a look at how the data are organised.
Do you understand what each row and column are?
Transects with no sightings
In all of your field work and data analysis, not just distance sampling, it’s vital to distinguish between:
- Zero, which means that a survey was done but nothing found
- Blank or ‘no data’, which indicates that the survey wasn’t done - location was inaccessible; a camera-trap failed to work etc
All surveyed transects must be represented in your data, even if no animals or sign were sighted
This allows R to accurately calculate the survey effort as total distance surveyed
In our case study, deer were sighted on all transects