IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0005632.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

GPS Measurement Error Gives Rise to Spurious 180° Turning Angles and Strong Directional Biases in Animal Movement Data

Author

Listed:
  • Amy Hurford

Abstract

Background: Movement data are frequently collected using Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, but recorded GPS locations are subject to errors. While past studies have suggested methods to improve location accuracy, mechanistic movement models utilize distributions of turning angles and directional biases and these data present a new challenge in recognizing and reducing the effect of measurement error. Methods: I collected locations from a stationary GPS collar, analyzed a probabilistic model and used Monte Carlo simulations to understand how measurement error affects measured turning angles and directional biases. Results: Results from each of the three methods were in complete agreement: measurement error gives rise to a systematic bias where a stationary animal is most likely to be measured as turning 180° or moving towards a fixed point in space. These spurious effects occur in GPS data when the measured distance between locations is

Suggested Citation

  • Amy Hurford, 2009. "GPS Measurement Error Gives Rise to Spurious 180° Turning Angles and Strong Directional Biases in Animal Movement Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(5), pages 1-12, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0005632
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005632
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005632
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005632&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0005632?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tong Liu & Angela R Green & Luis F Rodríguez & Brett C Ramirez & Daniel W Shike, 2015. "Effects of Number of Animals Monitored on Representations of Cattle Group Movement Characteristics and Spatial Occupancy," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-17, February.
    2. Joseph D. Bailey & Edward A. Codling, 2021. "Emergence of the wrapped Cauchy distribution in mixed directional data," AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis, Springer;German Statistical Society, vol. 105(2), pages 229-246, June.
    3. A. Parton & P. G. Blackwell, 2017. "Bayesian Inference for Multistate ‘Step and Turn’ Animal Movement in Continuous Time," Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, Springer;The International Biometric Society;American Statistical Association, vol. 22(3), pages 373-392, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0005632. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.