Occupancy

About: Occupancy is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2757 publications have been published within this topic receiving 68288 citations.

Habitat Dynamics of the Virginia Opossum in a Highly Urban Landscape

Abstract: As urban habitats vary in composition and structure along the urban to rural gradient, different degrees of urbanization likely result in a diversity of landscape responses from wildlife. We investigated this relationship with the Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), an urban adapted species that is both common and understudied in highly metropolitan landscapes. We investigated which landscape factors affect opossum occupancy, colonization, extinction, and detection by using a large system of motion-triggered camera traps in the Chicago metropolitan area over 10 seasons from spring 2010 to summer 2012. Opossum patch occupancy rates were highest near natural water sources regardless of urbanization, whereas occupancy rates in patches ≥1000 m from natural water sources decreased with increasing urbanization. Our results suggest opossums have relaxed habitat needs at intermediate levels of disturbance, as the ability to locate anthropogenic water sources may allow them to occupy previously uninh...

A model for HF spectral occupancy

Abstract: A record of HF occupancy has been made over a five-year period, and the paper describes an attempt to model some of the experimental results.

Centralized Management of HVAC Energy in Large Multi-AHU Zones

Abstract: HVAC control strategies that exploit temporal variations in zone occupancy have been well studied. However, at a given time, occupancy can also vary spatially within a single large zone with no internal wall partitions, that is served by multiple AHUs. We complement prior work by studying how spatial variations in a large zone can be leveraged to save energy and improve occupant comfort. Specifically, we propose a novel strategy for centralized reactive control of all the AHUs serving a large zone, MAZIC (Multi-AHU Zone Intelligent Control). To decide control outputs, we use a thermal model to capture the mixing of heat loads across different regions of the large zone served by different AHUs. We study MAZIC's performance in terms of energy consumption and comfort using real-world occupancy data. When the spatial skew in occupancy is high, MAZIC reduces energy consumption by 11% over individual PID controllers running at each AHU, while maintaining similar comfort levels. Sensing temperature and occupancy at finer spatial resolution helps both MAZIC and PID controllers to save more energy when the occupancy is skewed. Finer spatial sensing does not add much value when the occupancy is not so skewed. We also find that augmenting MAZIC with a MPC (Model Predictive Control) approach yields insignificant improvement (

Factors Affecting Landscape Occupancy by Fishers in North-Central British Columbia

Abstract: To better understand distribution and density of fishers (Martes pennanti) in industrial forests of north-central British Columbia, Canada, we examined factors affecting the probability of a potential home range being occupied by 10 radiotagged resident fishers in the Sub-Boreal Spruce biogeoclimatic zone between 1996 and 2000. Percentage of a home range in wetlands and recently logged (within past 12 yr) best predicted likelihood of occupancy by each fisher. Probability of a home range area being occupied by a resident fisher decreased with increasing amounts of wetlands and recent logging present in the area. We estimated that a 5% increase in wetlands or recent logging decreased the relative probability of occupancy of a potential home range by 50%. The accelerated rate of timber harvest in forests affected by mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) infestations may have substantial implications for the ability of the landscape of central British Columbia to support sustainable populations of fishers.