Introduction
Data are available for the following groups of variables. The data come from regions within 3 km of golden eagle nests in Scotland. Is it possible to reduce the dimensionality of these data to produce a smaller number of orthogonal (uncorrelated) predictors?
Region Scottish region - not used in the PCA.
Topographic variables
MaxAlt Maximum altitude
MeanAlt Mean altitude
SDAlt Standard deviation of altitude (based on 100 m2 pixels)
MeanSlope Mean slope
Habitat variables (logarithmic transformation to decrease skew in frequency distributions)
Mire Area of bog
Heathland Area of heathland
WetHeath Area of wet heath
Grazing animals (logarithmic transformation of density measures to decrease skew in frequency distributions)
Deer
Sheep
Cattle
Vegetation
NPP Net Primary Production - measure of plant productivity
Grazed Amount of production removed by large grazers
