Forecasting Large-Scale Habitat Suitability of European Bustards under Climate Change: The Role of Environmental and Geographic Variables.

ABSTRACT: We modelled the distribution of two vulnerable steppe birds, Otis tarda and Tetrax tetrax, in the Western Palearctic and projected their suitability up to the year 2080. We performed two types of models for each species: one that included environmental and geographic variables (space-included model) and a second one that only included environmental variables (space-excluded model). Our assumption was that ignoring geographic variables in the modelling procedure may result in inaccurate forecasting of species distributions. On the other hand, the inclusion of geographic variables may generate an artificial constraint on future projections. Our results show that space-included models performed better than space-excluded models. While distribution of suitable areas for T. tetrax in the future

SUBMITTER: Estrada A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4777476 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature