Forecasting biodiversity in breeding birds using best practices.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity forecasts are important for conservation, management, and evaluating how well current models characterize natural systems. While the number of forecasts for biodiversity is increasing, there is little information available on how well these forecasts work. Most biodiversity forecasts are not evaluated to determine how well they predict future diversity, fail to account for uncertainty, and do not use time-series data that captures the actual dynamics being studied. We addressed these limitations by using best practices to explore our ability to forecast the species richness of breeding birds in North America. We used hindcasting to evaluate six different modeling approaches for predicting richness. Hindcasts for each method were evaluated annually for a decade at 1,237 sites d

SUBMITTER: Harris DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5808145 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature