MODELING THE EFFECT OF SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE ON SEA TURTLE NESTING ACTIVITIES BY INVESTIGATING SEASONAL TRENDS

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Abstract
In the present study, a series of models have been developed in order to investigate the effect of sea water temperature upon the nesting activities of marine turtles. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models, ARIMA models with transfer functions and regression models were developed for forecasting variations in the breeding activity of loggerheads, nesting at the island of Zakynthos, West Greece. Identification and development of the models was determined by the use of several statistical criteria. Weekly data series of sea turtles emerging attempts and number of nests laid were analyzed and compared with sea surface temperature (SST) data series.Our results indicate that whether SST data were included in the ARIMA models with transfer functions and the regression models that developed to describe both emergence data and number of nests, tended to improve fitting and forecasting accuracy. Data series of the number of nests laid was further correlated with observation of emergence data. Adding the effect of previous and current year nesting attempts and including SST data resulted to higher forecasting accuracy and fitting performance.

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