Intro to ENM course
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so this is just bit of an introduction to why would we be giving an ecological niche modelling course
I can't just XXXXXX around the room XXXXXX your address
that's probably reason enough, but I want you to get to a little bit of context to why we are working in this field
and then Richard will give bit of a XXXX as well
more focused on the actual modelling aspects
but essentially when we talk about adversity of fields is it biodiversity history, is it biodiversity conservation
all of the topics XXXXXXX among your colleagues a lot of those fields
and having good information about geographic distribution of species
obviously there are elements of each of these fields that don't depend on distributional information
but each of those fields are enriched by having really good geographic information
let me give you the example of biodiversity conservation
I am going to show you a number of products
here is a book that summerizes biodiversity hotspots
and important bird areas in Africa and associated islands
this isn't just things that I found in the web they have something in common
this is an analysis of endemic bird areas in Peru
and protected areas XXXX forests across North Western South America
here, critical areas for biodiversity conservation world wide
notice this distribution within Africa, maybe you have a different view of those priorities
what all those have in common, they all referred biodiversity and they all are geographic in subsets
Instill down to being based on information and geographic distribution of species
and my question for you is where does that geographic information come from
when you look at that, that is summerizing some aspect of biodiverity distributions
where does that geographic information come from?
and how much do you believe it?
here are the mega diverse countries
XXXX Africa
Endemic bird areas
over 200 ecosystems
biodiversity hotspots
but again all comes back to species, That's a humming bird from the Andes of Peru
it comes back to individual species and where they are
so that's the question that is kind of the basis of this whole week that we spent together
now an increasingly common tendency is to say"Oh, there is digital data sets of XXXXXXXX
here is an example where you can get digital distribution maps of important pollinator species
digital distribution maps of birds of western hemisphere and mammals of W. hemisphere
amphibians of the world, fresh water fish of the US
and so depending on where you work maybe you can go to these websites and download
and they have some nice XXXXXXXXX that summerize the distributions of all those species
here's an example XXXXXXX to that website and downloaded one of the days
that's this is for a toucan in Neptropics
this is Mexico, Southern Mexico Guatamala
and the grey shading is the area that XXXX these distribution of the species
the white dots are actual occurences
and what I want you to see is XXXXXX standing way in the back if your eyes are as bad as mine are
that map is right
where you see grey pretty much the birds are there
but when you start getting closer you start seeing a lot of little sections
of big areas where no records document the species as being present
and number of areas where the species is present is outside of the grey shade
now there is a first question of what is right
what is correct OK
one word of correct is XXXX they are in middle America
so in that sense they are both kind of in the same place and if I were looking from all the way back there
the coincidence is pretty good and that's the XXX occurences here and here
by the same time coincidence when I come closer the coicidence is pretty bad ???
so it's very scaled XXX, if I need a coarse resolution view
maybe that's absolutely OK. of course the topography of Mexico is very very fine grained
across space. so a coarse resolution maybe doesn't do enough
if we want to plan for conservation or something like that
if we need that fine resolution view maybe those maps (definitely those maps) are XXXXXXXXX
so we XXXXXXX to use the one XXXXXXXX
just to give you a little bit more detail those maps like this for the toucan
are frequently derived from range maps that come with monographic XXXX field guides
so you can see that there's a map there
and so I took a ruler and I measured from sothern tip of greenland to the southern tip of India
is 1.625 inches, sorry about the nonXXXXX system
so the actual distance on the earth's surface is 431 million inches
and that gives us a map scale of 1 : 265 million
that's not a fine scale map that is communicating a lot of detail
in fact the width of the outline of each of those countries is huge
just the border is huge
so there is no way you can XXXXXXX detail
and what those maps that I showed you in the previous slides do is that they take this and make out scale
and they turn that into those nice round polygons
so what I'm after is anything other than the coarsest view of species distributions
polygon based XXXXX summeries that are not built in customized fashion will not be enough
so that kind of takes to why this methodology came in to be
I want you to think about biodiversity in this two dimensional space
one is how much we know about the species
from nothing to very comprehensive
the other dimension is how many species are represnted that XXXXXX not
and it appears that quite generally the shape of this relationship
is this very negative curve
which is to say for very few species do we know a lot
talking about XXXXXX XXXXXX for example we know its genome, its protein structure, genetics, distribution, physiology
some species are a bit better known, most species are very poorly known
so we kind of label different places along that curve where most of the species are little or not at all known
here in the middle may be the geographical distribution XXXXXXXX
but most of the species on earth are poorly known
so for example if you want to use an alternative approach to what we are going to talk to you about this week
where we will build exactly the process based model or methodistic models
you might be able to deal with that part of the spectrum
this is something where we have detailed physiological measurements
or a detailed first principles model of the like;y physiology of the species
well those are going to be XXXX to only a very small number of species
because we require such detailed XXXXXXXXX
the approach that we are going to talk about will apply it further
essentially they are XXXX to dealwith this end of the spectrum wher we know something about the geographic distribution
for described species, almost always atleast you know one place where they occur.
the type locality. Now always learn that
so the idea behind this methodology from the outset was to have low data requirements
at the entry so that it would the methodology would be XXXXX for a large number of species.
Essentially what we are going to do is we are going to do a trick
we don't trust our geographic sampling to be comprehensive
but what we are going to do is we are going to take samples in geography
related to the environments
essentially make this a position that the species will occur under a XXXXXXXX environments
that's why we talk about ecological niche modelling
now Richard is going to get up and say ecological "niche" modelling
and I am going to remind him that I call him Richard and his name doesn't have a XXXXXXX either
so essentially we find some way to infer an environmental distribution
you can call it an ecological niche...
doesn't really matter, it's finally some sets of environments
and seeing where are those environments manifested XXXXXXXXXXXX
now how we do all that is pretty complex
and the species may have a part of its foot print of its acceptable environment
but may not have all of the foot print
so I gave you a very simple summary of niche modelling
and it's going to get complex essentially compared to now
so the three people who have been trying to explain this field to you are
Richard Pearson, Enrique Martinez and me
we've been working together a decade or something
Enrique a bit longer, XXXX sometimes a PhD student at the University of Kansas
Richard did a PhD in Britain then a post doc at the American University in the New York City.
and years ago I was looking at his CV and I noticed that he put me down as his post doc advisor
and I thought WoW! XXXXXXXXXX claim you as my post doc
and I query him on it and he said XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
OK right away I put it on my CV
Basically I'm proud that I associated with both Enrique and Richard over the years
and infact in 2011 we produced this book
and it was published by Princeton University press and it is a summary of what we learnt together
over the years about this field, not just niche modelling, but single species distributional ecology as well
so what are we trying to do this week is a big objective
but what we would ideally like to achieve is about the conceptual basis
and much of the imperical knowledge so that you are able to do publishable work in this field of ecological niche modelling
I am hoping that we'll have lot of discussion and debate
XXXXX interchange which is to say please don't be shy
if you have a question ask it
and if you disagree say so
we'll talk about it
in the other objective is the capture of XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXX it's not just the 53 of us who can see these presentations
and debates
so there XXX you got that right?
this is a figure of chapter 4 of our book
but then I started adding to it everything that I learnt in the XXX few years
this is kind of the frame work for our whole week
I don't put this up to scare you but rather begin you on an idea XXXXXXXXXX
essentially when we come down, we have to assemble occurence data
and we have to assemble environmental data
and both of those data streams need to be processed
in fact they need to be processed in tandem
that's where this error of going back and forth between the two data streams
but essentially this is dots on the map where your species is known to occur
and this is maps of environmental inventions
showing what's going on in ideal climate in ideal XXXXXXXX what have you
by the time we get here that's where we press the button and learn a niche model
we do a whole bunch of things that calibrate those models well
there's this evaluation step where basically if we haven't tested our model
and made sure if it has some predictive power
we shouldn't interpret it
so without an evaluation step I am not very interested in looking at a model output
and then we can predict our model on to the piece of geography that we are interested in
we may be interested in other situations while we mention climate change
well, this might be a guess at future climate
some other model outfit and then we will XXXXXX it's reputation
so it's quite a complex process
and certainly the 3 of us and dozen colleagues around the world have been learning lesson after lesson after lesson
about how to do this process better
we are going to give you our own particular view of that XXXXX
we are going to try that point in towards the most critical step
and maybe point away from things that we got a lot of time in our XXXXXXX
we do our best. If next week somebody is here XXXX doing session touch
we can XXXXXX OK
we are doing our best to give you a strategic view of how to get from data to useable results
as robustly and as efficiently as we can
we have already shown you that. Those are all the topics that we are trying to cover
so please drink a lot of coffee at each of the breaks
because we are going to need it
here's again a general plan
see if you can get your XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
so that you can to work right at nine o'clock each day
lectures for 2 hours, half hour breaks
at 11.30 am you are XXXX go off OK
you are ready to get back to work hour an a half and hour for lunch
hour and half then a break
another hour, then you'll be worn out by then and we too
and if you have any special needs XXXXXXX regarding diet or schedule
just let Kate or me know and we'll do our best to accompaXXXXX you
she quietly avoided the microphone when we were doing introduction
that's Kate XXXXXXXXXX.
her interests so far in 2 years of graduate studying include dryland snake distributions across South America
Albatross distributions, pelagic albatross in the Southern oceans
XXXXXX river systems in glacial valleys
and we'll see what comes next
and most importantly that's my grand daughter
(SORRYYY I dont know the spellings of her name :((() that's the best recent picture I could find of myself