Landscape resistance from spatial randomization

I was intrigued by the idea of running simulations to define landscape resistance as presented in Cushman et al. (2010). Their basic strategy is to use measured track data as a proxy for landscape resistance. They randomly shift and rotate their measured tracks in order to generate support for their paramaterization of landscape resistance by comparing original and transformed tracks. The R code below takes an approximation of their example track and puts it through the same random shifting/rotating procedure.

    library(raster)
    library(sp)
    library(maptools)
    library(grDevices)
    library(XML)
    
    path.mat<-eval(parse(text=gsub('\r\n','\n',xpathApply(htmlTreeParse('http://pastebin.com/HN1u8fpW',useInternal=T),'//textarea',xmlValue))))
    names(path.mat)<-c("x","y")
    path.mat<-path.mat/10000
    
    path<-Lines(list(Line(path.mat)),ID="p")
    pathSL<-SpatialLines(list(path))
    
    rot.list<-list()
    for(i in 1:199){
      #randomly shift nodes between 0 and 30km 
      shiftx<-sample(seq(-3,3,0.01),1,replace=T)
      shifty<-sample(seq(-3,3,0.01),1,replace=T)
      npath.mat<-cbind(path.mat[,1]+shiftx,path.mat[,2]+shifty)
      npath<-Lines(list(Line(npath.mat)),ID="np")
      npathSL<-SpatialLines(list(npath))
      
      #randomly rotate path
      npath.rot<-elide(npathSL,rotate=sample(seq(0,360,0.01),1,replace=T),center=apply(bbox(pathSL),1,mean))
      npath.rot.mat<-coordinates(npath.rot)[[1]][[1]]
      rot.list[[i]]<-npath.rot<-Lines(list(Line(npath.rot.mat)),ID=paste("npr",i,sep=""))
    }
    rot.list$original<-path
    all.lines<-SpatialLines(rot.list)
    
    
    #generate simulated resistance surface
    textent<-bbox(all.lines)
    nrows<-(textent[1,2]-textent[1,1])
    ncols<-(textent[2,2]-textent[2,1])
    rsurf<-raster(matrix(NA,nrow=nrows,ncol=ncols))
    extent(rsurf)<-textent
    rsurf[]<-runif(nrows*ncols)
    rsurf<-rsurf>0.8
    
    plot(rsurf)
    plot(all.lines,col=c(rainbow(199),"black"))

###Reference

Cushman, S. A., Chase, M., & Griffin, C. (2010). Mapping landscape resistance to identify corridors and barriers for elephant movement in southern Africa. In Spatial complexity, informatics, and wildlife conservation (pp. 349-367). Springer Japan.