A suite of global, cross-scale topographic variables for environmental and biodiversity modeling

Amatulli, Giuseppe; Domisch, Sami; Tuanmu, Mao‐Ning; Parmentier, Benoît; Ranipeta, Ajay; Malczyk, Jeremy; Jetz, Walter

doi:10.1038/sdata.2018.40

Cited by 522 publications

(434 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

379

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In places where most flooding is caused by precipitation, the spatial extent of synchronous precipitation provides an approximate upper bound on the spatial extent of synchronous flooding. Mean flood synchrony scales are inversely correlated (p < 0.001) with station elevation and terrain ruggedness (Amatulli et al, 2018), indicating that flooding tends to be more spatially coherent at lower altitudes and in flatter landscapes ( Figure S7). Topography, on the other hand, appears to substantially influence the flood synchrony scale.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Growing Spatial Scales of Synchronous River Flooding in Europe

Berghuijs

Allen

Harrigan

et al. 2019

Geophysical Research Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

River flooding is a common hazard, causing billions of dollars in annual losses. Flood impacts are shaped by the spatial scale over which different rivers flood simultaneously, but this dimension of flood risk remains largely unknown. Using annual flood data from several thousand European rivers, we demonstrate that the flood synchrony scale—the distance over which multiple rivers flood near synchronously—far exceeds the size of individual drainage basins and varies regionally by more than an order of magnitude. These data also show that flood synchrony scales have grown by about 50% over the period 1960–2010. Detrended flood synchrony values are serially correlated, implying that years with spatially extensive floods tend to follow one another. These findings reveal that flood risks are correlated well beyond the individual drainage basins for which flood hazards are typically assessed and managed.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Growing Spatial Scales of Synchronous River Flooding in Europe

Berghuijs

Allen

Harrigan

et al. 2019

Geophysical Research Letters

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To account for the effects of elevation and topography, each checklist location was associated with elevation, eastness, and northness. These latter two topographic variables combine slope and aspect to provide a continuous measure describing geographic orientation in combination with slope at 1-km 2 resolution (Amatulli et al 2018). Each checklist was also linked to a series of covariates derived from the NASA MODIS land cover data (Friedl et al 2010).…”

Section: Predictor Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling avian full annual cycle distribution and population trends with citizen science data

Fink

Auer

Johnston

et al. 2020

Ecological Applications

147

176

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Information on species’ distributions, abundances, and how they change over time is central to the study of the ecology and conservation of animal populations. This information is challenging to obtain at landscape scales across range‐wide extents for two main reasons. First, landscape‐scale processes that affect populations vary throughout the year and across species’ ranges, requiring high‐resolution, year‐round data across broad, sometimes hemispheric, spatial extents. Second, while citizen science projects can collect data at these resolutions and extents, using these data requires appropriate analysis to address known sources of bias. Here, we present an analytical framework to address these challenges and generate year‐round, range‐wide distributional information using citizen science data. To illustrate this approach, we apply the framework to Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina), a long‐distance Neotropical migrant and species of conservation concern, using data from the citizen science project eBird. We estimate occurrence and abundance across a range of spatial scales throughout the annual cycle. Additionally, we generate intra‐annual estimates of the range, intra‐annual estimates of the associations between species and characteristics of the landscape, and interannual trends in abundance for breeding and non‐breeding seasons. The range‐wide population trajectories for Wood Thrush show a close correspondence between breeding and non‐breeding seasons with steep declines between 2010 and 2013 followed by shallower rates of decline from 2013 to 2016. The breeding season range‐wide population trajectory based on the independently collected and analyzed North American Breeding Bird Survey data also shows this pattern. The information provided here fills important knowledge gaps for Wood Thrush, especially during the less studied migration and non‐breeding periods. More generally, the modeling framework presented here can be used to accurately capture landscape scale intra‐ and interannual distributional dynamics for broadly distributed, highly mobile species.

show abstract

“…We downloaded the current land surface climatic data with a resolution of 30 arc‐second from CHELSA (available at http://chelsa-climate.org), which contains average values of 19 predictor variables for the time period 1979–2013 (Karger et al, ; Table S2). In addition, we obtained elevation and slope at 30 arc‐second resolution from EarthEnv (available at http://www.earthenv.org/topography; Amatulli et al, ). We resampled all variables to 5 arc‐minutes.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future climate change will severely reduce habitat suitability of the Critically Endangered Chinese giant salamander

Zhang

Mammola

Liang³

et al. 2020

Freshwater Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Being the largest extant amphibian in the world, the IUCN Critically Endangered Chinese giant salamander Andrias davidianus is a charismatic species with great international public interest. While threats such as commercial overexploitation and habitat degradation have been extensively documented to affect natural populations of A. davidianus, still no information is available about the species sensitivity to climate change. Here, we develop an ensemble of species distribution models (SDMs) for A. davidianus and projected its habitat suitability under present‐day and future climate change scenarios. We based our SDMs on bioclimatic and topographic predictors, and recent (2012–2018) field‐collected occurrence data across the whole distribution range of the species. The ensemble SDMs exhibited good predictive capacity and suggested that slope, maximum temperature of warmest month, precipitation of driest month, and isothermality are the most influential predictors in determining distribution patterns in this species. The projections of our models point to a pronounced impact of climate changes over A. davidianus, with more than two‐thirds of its suitable range expected to be lost in all scenarios of future climates tested. In concert with the numerous other threats that are affecting this species, climate change poses a serious hindrance to the long‐term survival of A. davidianus. We emphasise the urgent need of undertaking strict measures to manage this species and safeguard the few remaining available suitable habitats. We suggest that adaptive management strategies including designation of new reserves should be considered to mitigate the impacts of climate change on A. davidianus.

show abstract

A suite of global, cross-scale topographic variables for environmental and biodiversity modeling

Cited by 522 publications

References 45 publications

Growing Spatial Scales of Synchronous River Flooding in Europe

Growing Spatial Scales of Synchronous River Flooding in Europe

Modeling avian full annual cycle distribution and population trends with citizen science data

Future climate change will severely reduce habitat suitability of the Critically Endangered Chinese giant salamander

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About