4.5 Article

Scale effects on the performance of niche-based models of freshwater fish distributions

Journal

ECOLOGICAL MODELLING
Volume 405, Issue -, Pages 33-42

Publisher

ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2019.05.006

Keywords

Catchment order; Conservation planning; Danube; Generalized additive models; Species distribution modelling

Categories

Funding

  1. DFG [MA 6593/2-1]
  2. Horizon 2020 ECOPOTENTIAL project [641762]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Niche-based species distribution models (SDMs) have become an essential tool in conservation and restoration planning. Given the current threats to freshwater biodiversity, it is of fundamental importance to address scale effects on the performance of niche-based SDMs of freshwater species' distributions. The scale effects are addressed here in the context of hierarchical catchment ordering, considered as counterpart to coarsening grain-size by increasing grid-cell size. We combine fish occurrence data from the Danube River Basin, the hierarchical catchment ordering and multiple environmental factors representing topographic, climatic and anthropogenic effects to model fish occurrence probability across multiple scales. We focus on 1st to 5th order catchments. The spatial scale (hierarchical catchment order) only marginally influences the mean performance of SDMs, however the uncertainty of the estimates increases with scale. Key predictors and their relative importance are scale and species dependent. Our findings have useful implications for choosing proper species dependent spatial scales for river rehabilitation measures, and for conservation planning in areas where fine grain species data are unavailable.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.5
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available