Fig 1.
Game Management Unit 9D study area for a spring 2002 distance sampling survey of brown bears, Southern Alaska Peninsula, Alaska (U.S Geological Survey, National Hydrology Dataset https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/ngp/national-hydrography/access-national-hydrography-products and the U.S. Geological Survey, National Elevation Dataset, http://ned.usgs.gov/).
Note: Some transects are depicted in very shallow water and low tide mud flats, both of which brown bears use to harvest clams.
Fig 2.
Game Management Unit 10 study area for a spring 2002 distance sampling survey of brown bears, Eastern Aleutian Islands, Alaska (U.S Geological Survey, National Hydrology Dataset https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/ngp/national-hydrography/access-national-hydrography-products and the U.S. Geological Survey, National Elevation Dataset, http://ned.usgs.gov/).
Fig 3.
Reference sheet for percent cover and percent snow for a spring 2002 distance sampling survey of brown bears in southwestern Alaska.
Table 1.
Sample sizes for categorical covariates used in the mark-resight distance models by Game Management Unit, Southwest Alaska.
Fig 4.
Estimated average detection of brown bears from a spring 2002 line-transect survey of Game Management Unit (GMU) 9D, GMU 10, and for GMUs 9D, and 10 combined, Southwest Alaska.
Average detection for the multiple covariate distance sampling model was the mean of the observed covariate values for covariates used in the model applied to their model coefficients. For the mark-resight model, a weighted average of the covariates [2, eq 17) was used to calculate average apex detection, which was used to rescale the graph. The histogram is for the combined GMU 9D and 10 datasets.
Table 2.
Coefficients and standard errors of the best fitting multiple covariate distance sampling (MCDS) models of bear detections in GMU 9D, GMU 10, and GMU 9D and 10 combined southern Alaska Peninsula, Alaska.
Table 3.
Coefficients and standard errors of the best fitting mark-resight (MR) models of bear detections in GMU 9D, GMU 10, and GMU 9D and 10 combined southern Alaska Peninsula, Alaska.
Fig 5.
Estimated detection of brown bears in Game Management Unit 9D and 10, Southwest Alaska, by binned search distance, from a spring 2002 distance sampling survey.
Bins (Bin2SD1000) were coded as: Bin 1 = 0 (search distance was 1000 m or less), Bin 2 = 1 (search distance greater than 1000 m).
Fig 6.
Estimated detection of brown bears in Game Management Unit 9D and 10, Southwest Alaska, by transect type, from a spring 2002 distance sampling survey.
Contour transects were flown in mountainous terrain; straight/hinged transects were flown over flatter terrain.
Fig 7.
QQ-plot of the best multiple covariate distance sampling model of bear detection in Game Management Unit 9D and 10 combined, Southwest Alaska.
Table 4.
Brown bear abundance estimates, standard errors, coefficients of variation, and confidence intervals for Game Management Unit (GMU) 9D, for GMU 10, and for GMUs 9D and 10 combined, Southwest, Alaska.
Line transect survey conducted 29 May to 11 June 2002.
Table 5.
Estimated brown bear harvest rates for Game Management Unit 9D and 10 in Southwest Alaska, October 2001 –May 2003.
Game Management Unit 9D has biennial hunts, resulting in open hunts during even years in spring and odd years in fall; therefore, reported harvest over 2-year open and closed periods are averaged to reflect annual harvest. GMU 10, Unimak Island, has annual brown bear hunts.