Can fire atlas data improve species distribution model projections?
Summary
Disturbance history, like fire, minimally impacts species distribution models (SDMs) under climate change. Incorporating fire data did not significantly improve SDM accuracy for most vascular plant species in California.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Climate Change Biology
- Computational Biology
Background:
- Correlative species distribution models (SDMs) are crucial for predicting climate change impacts on biodiversity.
- SDMs often overlook disturbance processes, limiting their predictive accuracy.
- Fire is a significant disturbance influencing plant species distributions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the influence of fire disturbance history on the accuracy of species distribution models (SDMs).
- To determine if incorporating fire-related predictors improves SDM projections under climate change scenarios.
- To evaluate the role of fire occurrence and fire return interval departure in predicting vascular plant distributions in California.
Main Methods:
- Utilized two independent datasets of vascular plant distributions, climate data, and fire atlases in California.
- Employed hierarchical partitioning to analyze the effect of fire occurrence on 144 vascular plant species.
- Developed and compared multiple SDMs, including fire occurrence and fire return interval departure as predictors.
Main Results:
- Fire occurrence had limited explanatory power for species distributions, except for species reliant on fire for regeneration.
- Departure from historical fire return intervals offered more explanatory power than fire occurrence but marginally improved model accuracy for most species.
- Fire variables were strongly correlated with climatic covariates, suggesting limited additional predictive power for SDMs.
Conclusions:
- The inclusion of coarse-scale disturbance measures, such as fire, may not be essential for improving SDM accuracy under climate change.
- For disturbance processes primarily mediated by climate, SDM projections may not benefit significantly from incorporating disturbance history.
- Future SDM development should consider the interplay between climate and disturbance, but direct inclusion of disturbance may offer limited gains for certain processes.
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