Variance of sightings in the survey of patchily distributed objects (Q1092584)

In the field, animals, birds and fishes are often distributed inhomogeneously. In such situations, the variance of sightings of strip or line transect survey would be larger than when they are independently distributed one another. We formulate in this paper the structure of the patchy configuration, and deduce the variance of sightings of strip or line transect survey. From this, we see that it is larger when the patch size (the expected number of objects in each patch) is larger and the patch radius is smaller.