7 research outputs found
Estimating how inflated or obscured effects of climate affect forecasted species distribution
Climate is one of the main drivers of species distribution. However, as different environmental factors tend to co-vary, the
effect of climate cannot be taken at face value, as it may be either inflated or obscured by other correlated factors. We used
the favourability models of four species (Alytes dickhilleni, Vipera latasti, Aquila fasciata and Capra pyrenaica) inhabiting
Spanish mountains as case studies to evaluate the relative contribution of climate in their forecasted favourability by using
variation partitioning and weighting the effect of climate in relation to non-climatic factors. By calculating the pure effect of
the climatic factor, the pure effects of non-climatic factors, the shared climatic effect and the proportion of the pure effect of
the climatic factor in relation to its apparent effect (r), we assessed the apparent effect and the pure independent effect of
climate. We then projected both types of effects when modelling the future favourability for each species and combination
of AOGCM-SRES (two Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models: CGCM2 and ECHAM4, and two Special Reports on
Emission Scenarios (SRES): A2 and B2). The results show that the apparent effect of climate can be either inflated (overrated)
or obscured (underrated) by other correlated factors. These differences were species-specific; the sum of favourable areas
forecasted according to the pure climatic effect differed from that forecasted according to the apparent climatic effect by
about 61% on average for one of the species analyzed, and by about 20% on average for each of the other species. The pure
effect of future climate on species distributions can only be estimated by combining climate with other factors. Transferring
the pure climatic effect and the apparent climatic effect to the future delimits the maximum and minimum favourable areas
forecasted for each species in each climate change scenario.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and FEDER (project CGL2009-11316/BOS). D. Romero is a PhD student at the University of Malaga with a grant of the Ministerio de Educacio´n y Ciencia (AP 2007-03633
Developing a predictive modelling capacity for a climate change-vulnerable blanket bog habitat: Assessing 1961-1990 baseline relationships
Aim: Understanding the spatial distribution of high priority habitats and
developing predictive models using climate and environmental variables to
replicate these distributions are desirable conservation goals. The aim of this
study was to model and elucidate the contributions of climate and topography to
the distribution of a priority blanket bog habitat in Ireland, and to examine how
this might inform the development of a climate change predictive capacity for
peat-lands in Ireland.
Methods: Ten climatic and two topographic variables were recorded for grid
cells with a spatial resolution of 1010 km, covering 87% of the mainland
land surface of Ireland. Presence-absence data were matched to these variables
and generalised linear models (GLMs) fitted to identify the main climatic and
terrain predictor variables for occurrence of the habitat. Candidate predictor
variables were screened for collinearity, and the accuracy of the final fitted GLM
was evaluated using fourfold cross-validation based on the area under the curve
(AUC) derived from a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plot. The GLM
predicted habitat occurrence probability maps were mapped against the actual
distributions using GIS techniques.
Results: Despite the apparent parsimony of the initial GLM using only climatic
variables, further testing indicated collinearity among temperature and precipitation
variables for example. Subsequent elimination of the collinear variables and
inclusion of elevation data produced an excellent performance based on the AUC
scores of the final GLM. Mean annual temperature and total mean annual
precipitation in combination with elevation range were the most powerful
explanatory variable group among those explored for the presence of blanket
bog habitat.
Main conclusions: The results confirm that this habitat distribution in general
can be modelled well using the non-collinear climatic and terrain variables tested
at the grid resolution used. Mapping the GLM-predicted distribution to the
observed distribution produced useful results in replicating the projected
occurrence of the habitat distribution over an extensive area. The methods
developed will usefully inform future climate change predictive modelling for
Irelan