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Pytracks: A Tool for Visualizing Fish Movement Tracks on Different Scales

A fundamental problem in conservation biology and fisheries management is the ability to make educated decisions based on the data collected. Fish populations and their spatial distributions need to be represented accurately for conversation efforts and management decisions. Methods such as modeling, surveying, and tracking can all be used to collect data on a particular fishery. To include the movement patterns in conservation and management, one needs to work with and process fish tracking data or data exported from fish movement simulation models. This data can often be difficult to process. This topic is becoming increasingly popular as technology to accurately track and log fish did not exist in the past. With all of this data being generated, real or simulated, tools need to be developed to efficiently process it all, as many do not exist. Pytracks attempts to fill a currently existing gap and help programmers who work with simulated and observed simulation data by allowing them to visualize and analyze their data more efficiently. Pytracks, as presented in this thesis, is a tool written in Python which wraps raw data files from field observations or simulation models with an easy to use API. This allows programmers to spend less time on trivial raw file processing and more time on data visualization and computation. The code to visualize sample data can also be much shorter and easier to interpret. In this thesis, pytracks was used to help solve a problem related to interpreting different movement algorithms. This work has a focus on fish movement models, but can also be relevant for any other type of animal if the data is compatible. Many examples have been included in this thesis to justify the effectiveness of pytracks. Additional online documentation has been written as well to show how to further utilize pytracks.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-01172016-085106
Date08 March 2016
CreatorsFossum, Ross
ContributorsRose, Kenneth, Busch, Konstantin, Mahmoud, Anas
PublisherLSU
Source SetsLouisiana State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-01172016-085106/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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