LiDAR, habitat structure and the ecology of ungulates in a landscape of fear

The expression ‘landscape of fear’ describes a situation in which prey behavior and space use across the landscape are shaped by spatial and temporal patterns in predation risk. Yet such behavioral and indirect effects of predation have been much less studied than its numerical and direct effects. One of the challenges in doing so is characterizing habitat at the resolution and extent necessary to effectively study this at the landscape level. In this thesis, I investigated the spatial risk patterns created by natural predators and human hunting and how these two predators influence the habitat selection and ecology of forest ungulates (roe deer, red deer, and moose) across several study systems in Norway.