Creating Relational Buffers to Alpha Hulls

[jtmiller28]

After creating the Alpha Hulls via rangeBuilder::getDynamicHull(), we need to buffer the hull based upon the species.

• Rob's suggestion: Use mdist to calculate the mean distance between occurrence points per species.

where x represents a species occurrence:
mdist(x1,x2....,xn) per species = mdist_avg
To buffer the alphahulls we will calculate the buffer proportional to each species relative distance to that of the species with the largest average occurrence point distance

(Per Species mdist_avg)
species_buffer = mdist_avg/max_mdist_avg
where, max_mdist_avg is among all species present in our dataset.

• Alternative/Supplemental Rob Suggestion: Resistance Fit
  Check relevant literature on this topic as this will help accommodate outlier issues.