Using POP-II
POP-II is menu-driven and easy to use. It is a straightforward,
"bookkeeping" approach to population dynamics that keeps track of the animals
through one or more biological years.
The biological year begins with birth pulse and
incorporates the following annual factors:
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pre- and post-harvest season natural mortality with
summer and winter severity indices,
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harvest and wounding loss mortality with hunter selectivity
and age-class vulnerability, and
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age-specific reproductive rates.
The user enters, edits, and prints all input data,
runs the model for a period up to 50 years, and then reviews a variety
of tabular and graphical depictions
of the resulting population. Typically, the user calibrates the model to
observed population data by comparing the simulation's output against the
observed data, using a set of criteria designed to measure the "goodness-of-fit"
between the two. A step-by-step "Simulation Details Report" of internal
calculations may also be reviewed if the user needs to open up the inner
workings of the simulation model.
The extensive documentation,
POP-II_Documentation.PDF
(300 KB; requires Adobe Acrobat Reader,
available free of charge from
Adobe),
provided with POP-II covers all aspects of
population simulation, including the following information:
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input data requirements,
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details of the simulation's logic,
-
examples
of input and output,
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references
to POP-II's modeling literature, and
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a philosophy
of applied modeling with imprecise data.
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