Simulating cetacean responses to sonar exposure within a Bayesian hierarchical modelling framework : technical report

Abstract

In this report, we present a framework for simulating responses of cetaceans to various military sonar exposure contexts using Bayesian hierarchical modelling. This work was motivated by the need to assess the utility of different types of animal-attached biotelemetry tags in improving our understanding of dose–response relationships. Specifically, we used a Monte Carlo approach to conduct a sensitivity analysis of the effects of uncertainty in acoustic dose measurements (i.e. received sound levels) on the probability of behavioural response. Accompanying R code is available and fully described in a sister document.