OOS 52
Novel Approaches for Process-Based Species Distribution Models

Friday, August 15, 2014: 8:00 AM-11:30 AM
307, Sacramento Convention Center
Organizer:
Margaret E. K. Evans, University of Arizona
Co-organizers:
Sydne Record, Harvard University; and Sean McMahon, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Moderator:
Brian J. Enquist, University of Arizona
Species distribution or niche models are now one of the most widely-used tools in large-scale ecology, conservation biology, and biogeography. Indeed, predicting species’ current and future geographic distributions is a central challenge in ecology, particularly in the light of climate and other global change factors. One of the most pressing issues is how to integrate ecological and physiological mechanisms into niche or distribution models. Many ecologists have called for the development of a better suite of process-based models to improve our understanding of species’ current range dynamics, and forecast their future distributions. Process-based range models look beyond correlations between species’ presence and environmental variables, towards dynamic influences on species’ geographic distributions. Such models should, in principle, have better predictive ability. Our goal is to gather together speakers tackling the challenge of process-based range modeling from a diversity of modeling frameworks and incorporating a diversity of processes. The processes under consideration include physiology, phenology, demography, dispersal, allometry, species interactions, and community dynamics. The organization of the session will follow this same hierarchy – beginning with models based on physiology, and ending with community-level models. We are targeting speakers who will be able to contribute case studies – novel modeling frameworks applied to real data – rather than theoretical or conceptual advancements. In addition to the particular models and organisms they will speak about, we will ask the speakers to address some of the key challenges posed by process-based range modeling, including i) the integration of different sources of data to gain better inference on important processes and parameters, ii) addressing sampling bias and spatial autocorrelation, iii) scaling from field sampling units (plots, etc.) to entire geographic ranges, and iv) validating model predictions.
8:00 AM
 Process-based estimation of niches and range dynamics of South African Proteaceae from demographic data and range-wide abundance variation
Jörn Pagel, University of Hohenheim; Martina Treurnicht, Stellenbosch University; Henning Nottebrock, University of Hohenheim; Karen Esler, Stellenbosch University; Frank M. Schurr, University of Hohenheim
8:20 AM
 Demography-based models of the geographic ranges of nine dominant tree species in western North America: Does a process-based approach improve models of distributions?
Margaret E. K. Evans, University of Arizona; Cory Merow, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center; Noah D. Charney, University of Massachusetts Amherst; Sydne Record, Harvard University; Andrew Gray, USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station; Sean McMahon, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; Brian J. Enquist, University of Arizona
8:40 AM
 Fitting demographic models of forest distributions to both patterns and processes in forest inventory data
Mark C. Vanderwel, University of Florida; Drew W. Purves, Microsoft Research; Jeremy W. Lichstein, University of Florida
9:00 AM
 Dynamic species distribution models for global change: Processes and resolution through the lenses of different approaches
Josep M. Serra-Diaz, Arizona State University; Janet Franklin, Arizona State University; Alexandra Syphard, San Diego State University and Conservation Biology Institute; Helen M. Regan, University of California Riverside; Frank W. Davis, University of California, Santa Barbara; Robert M. Scheller, Portland State University; Lee Hannah, University of California, Santa Barbara
9:20 AM
 Modeling species density for conservation through integrating occupancy and telemetry data
Morgan W. Tingley, Princeton University; Robert L. Wilkerson, Institute for Bird Populations; Rodney B. Siegel, Institute for Bird Populations
9:40 AM
9:50 AM
 The influence of scale on the importance of biotic interactions in species distribution models
Sydne Record, Harvard University; Jonathan Belmaker, Tel Aviv University; Phoebe L. Zarnetske, Michigan State University; Lydia Beaudrot, Conservation International; Angela L. Strecker, Portland State University
10:10 AM
 Integrating processes and data types for predicting species distributions across spatial scales
Walter Jetz, Yale University; Petr Keil, Yale University; Adam M. Wilson, Yale University; Robert B. O'Hara, Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre; Katherine Mertes, Yale University; Sami Domisch, Yale University
10:30 AM
 A framework for cross-scale integration for predictive modeling of species' ranges
Matthew V. Talluto, Universite du Quebec a Rimouski; Isabelle Boulangeat, Universite du Quebec a Rimouski; Dominique Gravel, Université du Québec à Rimouski