Identifier

etd-01172016-085106

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Computer Science

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

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.

Date

2015

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Busch, Konstantin

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.3070

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