Knowledge Agora



Scientific Article details

Title Prediction of potential areas of species distributions based on presence-only data
ID_Doc 68307
Authors Argáez, JA; Christen, JA; Nakamura, M; Soberón, J
Title Prediction of potential areas of species distributions based on presence-only data
Year 2005
Published Environmental And Ecological Statistics, 12, 1
DOI 10.1007/s10651-005-6816-2
Abstract We introduce a methodology to infer zones of high potential for the habitat of a species, useful for management of biodiversity, conservation, biogeography, ecology, or sustainable use. Inference is based on a set of sites where the presence of the species has been reported. Each site is associated with covariate values, measured on discrete scales. We compute the predictive probability that the species is present at each node of a regular grid. Possible spatial bias for sites of presence is accounted for. Since the resulting posterior distribution does not have a closed form, a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm is implemented. However, we also describe an approximation to the posterior distribution, which avoids MCMC. Relevant features of the approach are that specific notions of data acquisition such as sampling intensity and detectability are accounted for, and that available a priori information regarding areas of distribution of the species is incorporated in a clear-cut way. These concepts, arising in the presence-only context, are not addressed in alternative methods. We also consider an uncertainty map, which measures the variability for the predictive probability at each node on the grid. A simulation study is carried out to test and compare our approach with other standard methods. Two case studies are also presented. (c) 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.
Author Keywords biodiversity; ecology; mixture model; predictive probability map; prior elicitation
Index Keywords Index Keywords
Document Type Other
Open Access Open Access
Source Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED)
EID WOS:000229747900002
WoS Category Environmental Sciences; Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications; Statistics & Probability
Research Area Environmental Sciences & Ecology; Mathematics
PDF
Similar atricles
Scroll