I am modelling influence of fire on occurrence of certain bird species (count response variable) in Before/after control/impact experiment design. I've got intact and burned sites and count data both from before and after the burning. I want to see if the fire has an effect on species occurrence. I've got three random variables: site (18 lvls), year of count (3 lvls) and point count spot within site (10 counts per 18 sites = 180 lvls). I use family=nb based on my data distribution (histogram, slight overdispersion).
(dataset fragment as csv file: mediafire.com/file/u50jca8p8kwir4j/firedataset.csv/file)
I create a GAM model in R for the species:
g1 <- gam(bird~s(point, bs="re") +
bef.aft*ctrl.imp + s(site, bs='re') + s(year, bs='re'),
data=mydata,family=nb, method="REML")
When i run the model (which seem to work well for other species), I get enormous standard error for the interaction parameter. This is the exact result:
I investigated my data and i think i've found the root of the problem. There was not a single observation of the species on sites struck by fire after the fire (what i believe is a case of "quasi-complete separation"). The summary table for my data looks like this:
impact | period | sum |
---|---|---|
control | before | 114 |
control | after | 39 |
impact | before | 74 |
impact | after | 0 |
When i experimentally changed one point count observation to value "1" to make impact/after total sum="1" instead of "0", the model results changed drastically and the fire turned out to have a visible impact on the species, which is the expected result.
I've looked up for some advice how to deal with the problem, but mostly found solutions relevant for situations where this perfect prediction is undesired. In my case it's different - this is my most important result.
Is there any way to deal with this problem? If it requires switching to different model than GAM, i'm fine with that (my explanatory variables are super simple). However, GAM-based solution would be the most desired one (for consistency in future publication).
Any advice would be highly appreciated.