Modelling Population Dynamics : Model Formulation Fitting and Assessment using State Space Methods This book gives a unifying framework for estimating the abundance of open populations: populations subject to births deaths and movement given imperfect measurements or samples of the populations. The focus is primarily on populations of vertebrates for which dynamics are typically modelled within the framework of an annual cycle and for which stochastic variability in the demographic processes is usually modest. Discrete time models are developed in which animals can be assigned to discrete states such as age class gender maturity population (within a metapopulation) or species (for multi species models). The book goes well beyond estimation of abundance allowing inference on underlying population processes such as birth or recruitment survival and movement. This requires the formulation and fitting of population dynamics models. The resulting fitted models yield both estimates of abundance and estimates of parameters characterizing the underlying processes. Introduction Matrices as Building Blocks State space Models Fitting State space models Model Formulation and Evaluation Modelling Population Dynamics Using Closed population Abundance Estimates Estimating Survival Probabilities from Mark re encounter Data Estimating Abundance from Mark recapture Data Integrated Population Modelling Concluding Remarks