Ecological metrics and methods for GPS movement data

The growing field of movement ecology uses high resolution movement data to analyze animal behavior across multiple scales: from individual foraging decisions to population-level space-use patterns. These analyses contribute to various subfields of ecology – inter alia behavioral, disease, landscape, resource, and wildlife – and facilitate novel exploration in fields ranging from conservation planning to public health. Despite the growing availability and general accessibility of animal movement data, much potential remains for the analytical methods of movement ecology to be incorporated in all types of geographic analyses. This review provides for the Geographical Information Sciences (GIS) community an overview of the most common movement metrics and methods of analysis employed by animal ecologists. Through illustrative applications, we emphasize the potential for movement analyses to promote transdisciplinary GIS/wildlife-ecology research.