We have two large camera trap data sets (tropical and temperate forest), which I would like to use for estimating animal density. Which are the available methods? Strengths and weaknesses? Thanks
A good place to start is Chapter 6 here: Technical Report Camera-trapping for conservation: a guide to best-practices
There are several publications on the topic but as a start you may have a look at these:
Tobler, M. W. & Powell, G. V. 2013. Estimating jaguar densities with camera traps: Problems with current designs and recommendations for future studies. Biological Conservation, 159: 109-118.
Howe, E. J.; Buckland, S. T.; Després-Einspenner, M.-L. & Kühl, H. S. 2017. Distance sampling with camera traps. Methods in Ecology and Evolution...
Adding to the answers by @Paul Glover-Kapfer and @Vincent Raphael Nyirenda, for animals that can be identified individually, with stripe or spot patterns, there's the SECR framework, you can use the SECR package in R or the software MARK. For species where individuals cannot be identified such as most ungulates, there's the REM proposed by Rowcliffe et al. 2008
Another way is to use Royle-Nichols occupancy model in PRESENCE or RPresence package in R, which uses count data from temporally replicated presence/absence data and estimates population density per sampling site.
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