Assessing the impact of scale-dependent geodiversity on species distribution models in a biodiversity hotspot

Beth Gerstner,  Michigan State University,  gerstn11@msu.edu (Presenter)
Phoebe Zarnetske,  Michigan State University,  plz@msu.edu
Mary Blair,  American Museum of Natural History,  mblair1@amnh.org

Knowledge about species’ distributions is essential for conservation, especially in light of global change. Species distribution models (SDMs) are commonly used to identify species’ ranges as part of designating their conservation status. These models often rely solely on environmental variable means as predictors at single resolutions, yet species distributions are also a function of environmental heterogeneity and filtering acting at different spatial scales. To capture spatial heterogeneity in the environment, scale-dependent measures of geodiversity can be applied to environmental variables and incorporated into SDMs. These variables offer an opportunity to improve biodiversity and conservation assessments, but their utility for SDMs has not been tested. We test a range of geodiversity variables computed at varying scales of remotely sensed climate and elevation. We compare the performance of Maxent SDMs generated using CHELSA bioclimatic variables only, to those including geodiversity measures using mammals in the Northern Andes as a test case. Results suggest that certain scales of geodiversity, such as standard deviation of elevation (SDelev), can improve the ability of SDMs to explain species distributions. Variable importance also increased with the spatial resolution of SDelev, signaling that certain measures of geodiversity are more relevant at some scales than others. This study’s open workflow for identifying scales of geodiversity predictors and their SDM performance will help practitioners make more robust models of species distributions and improve conservation assessments.

Poster Location ID: 1-36

Presentation Type: Poster

Session: Poster Session 1

Session Date: Tue (May 9) 5:00-7:00 PM

CCE Program: BDEC