Publication Details |
| Category | Text Publication |
| Reference Category | Journals |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00330.x |
| Title (Primary) | Modeling species' distributions to improve conservation in semiurban landscapes: koala case study |
| Author | Rhodes, J.R.; Wiegand, T.; McAlpine, C.A.; Callaghan, J.; Lunney, D.; Bowen, M.; Possingham, H.P. |
| Source Titel | Conservation Biology |
| Year | 2006 |
| Department | OESA |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Page From | 449 |
| Page To | 459 |
| Language | englisch |
| Abstract | Species distribution models are commonly used to inform landscape and conservation planning. In urban and semiurban landscapes, the distributions of species are often determined by a combination of natural habitat and anthropogenic impacts. Understanding the spatial influence of these two processes is crucial for making spatially explicit decisions about conservation actions. We present a logistic regression model for the distribution of koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus), in a semiurban landscape in eastern Australia, that explicitly separates the effect of natural habitat quality and anthropogenic impacts on koala distributions. We achieved this by comparing the predicted distributions with the predicted distributions assuming anthropogenic variables are fixed at their mean values. Similar approaches have relied on making predictions assuming anthropogenic variables are zero, which will be unreliable if the training data set does not include anthropogenic variables close to zero. Our approach is novel because it can be applied to landscapes where anthropogenic variables are never close to zero. Our model showed that, averaged across the study area, natural habitat was the main determinant of koala presence. However, at a local scale, anthropogenic impacts could be more important, with consequent implications for conservation planning. We demonstrate that, by using this modeling approach and presenting predictions visually as a map, provides important information for making decisions on how different conservation actions should be spatially allocated. This approach is particularly useful for areas where wildlife and human populations exist in close proximity. |
| Persistent UFZ Identifier | https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=2943 |
| Rhodes, J.R., Wiegand, T., McAlpine, C.A., Callaghan, J., Lunney, D., Bowen, M., Possingham, H.P. (2006): Modeling species' distributions to improve conservation in semiurban landscapes: koala case study Conserv. Biol. 20 (2), 449 - 459 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00330.x |
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