1. The contribution of vegetation and landscape configuration for predicting environmental change impacts on Iberian birds
- Author
-
Mar Cabeza, Thomas Hickler, María Triviño, Miguel B. Araújo, Wilfried Thuiller, Centre of Excellence in Metapopulation Research, Biosciences, Global Change and Conservation Lab, European Commission, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España), Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, National Museum of Natural Sciences, Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine (LECA), Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Savoie Mont Blanc (USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry]), Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science [Lund], Lund University [Lund], Senckenberg biodiversität und klima forschungszentrum (BIK-F), Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg (SGN), 'Rui Nabeiro' Biodiversity Chair, CIBIO-University of Évora [Portugal], Center Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Globe Institute, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (KU)-University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (KU)-Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, and University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (KU)-University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet (KU)
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,Atmospheric Science ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Environmental change ,Science ,Climate ,Climate Change ,Biology ,010603 evolutionary biology ,01 natural sciences ,Birds ,Ornithology ,Global Change Ecology ,Animals ,ddc:598 ,Macroecology ,Ecosystem ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Conservation Science ,Climatology ,Multidisciplinary ,Ensemble forecasting ,Ecology ,Geography ,Global change ,Vegetation ,Biodiversity ,15. Life on land ,Plants ,Regression ,Habitat ,Biogeography ,13. Climate action ,Spain ,[SDE]Environmental Sciences ,1181 Ecology, evolutionary biology ,Spatial ecology ,Earth Sciences ,Medicine ,Climate model ,Physical geography ,Zoology ,Research Article - Abstract
Although climate is known to be one of the key factors determining animal species distributions amongst others, projections of global change impacts on their distributions often rely on bioclimatic envelope models. Vegetation structure and landscape configuration are also key determinants of distributions, but they are rarely considered in such assessments. We explore the consequences of using simulated vegetation structure and composition as well as its associated landscape configuration in models projecting global change effects on Iberian bird species distributions. Both present-day and future distributions were modelled for 168 bird species using two ensemble forecasting methods: Random Forests (RF) and Boosted Regression Trees (BRT). For each species, several models were created, differing in the predictor variables used (climate, vegetation, and landscape configuration). Discrimination ability of each model in the present-day was then tested with four commonly used evaluation methods (AUC, TSS, specificity and sensitivity). The different sets of predictor variables yielded similar spatial patterns for well-modelled species, but the future projections diverged for poorly-modelled species. Models using all predictor variables were not significantly better than models fitted with climate variables alone for ca. 50% of the cases. Moreover, models fitted with climate data were always better than models fitted with landscape configuration variables, and vegetation variables were found to correlate with bird species distributions in 26-40% of the cases with BRT, and in 1-18% of the cases with RF. We conclude that improvements from including vegetation and its landscape configuration variables in comparison with climate only variables might not always be as great as expected for future projections of Iberian bird species., MC and MBA were funded by the European Commission Seventh Framework Program project European RESPONSES to climate change (grant agreement number 244092)., WT, TH and MBA were funded by the European Commission Sixth Framework Program ECOCHANGE project (Challenges in Assessing and Forecasting Biodiversity and Ecosystem Changes in Europe, contract no. 036866-GOCE)., MBA was further supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (complementary action no. CGL2008-01198-E/BOS).
- Published
- 2011