Developing and Validating Species Distribution Models for Wetland Plants Across Europe
Ojaswi Sumbh1, Marjon Hellegers1,2, Valerio Barbarossa1,3
1PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency The Hague the Netherlands.
Ecology and Evolution
|April 24, 2025
Summary
We developed species distribution models (SDMs) for 265 wetland plants and mosses, finding climate variables like temperature are key predictors. These models show good predictive power for conservation planning, especially for mosses.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Biodiversity Conservation
- Computational Biology
Background:
- Wetlands face threats from drainage, agriculture, and climate change, impacting biodiversity.
- Existing species distribution models (SDMs) for wetland plants are often limited geographically and lack crucial hydrological data.
- Mosses, vital wetland components, are frequently overlooked in current SDM research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate robust SDMs for 265 vascular plant and moss species in European wetlands.
- To incorporate climate, soil, hydrology, and anthropogenic variables into SDMs for improved accuracy.
- To assess the predictive performance of SDMs for different plant groups (mosses, diagnostic vascular plants, non-diagnostic plants).
Main Methods:
- Developed SDMs for 265 species using environmental data (climate, soil, hydrology, human impact).
- Validated spatial predictions via cross-validation and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) data.
- Validated modelled niche optima against empirical data.
Main Results:
- SDMs demonstrated strong predictive power, particularly for diagnostic mosses (median AUC 0.93, TSS 0.73) and vascular plants (median AUC 0.91, TSS 0.69).
- Climate variables, especially coldest month temperature, were primary predictors.
- Groundwater table depth significantly influenced diagnostic vascular plants but not mosses.
Conclusions:
- The developed SDMs effectively predict broad-scale wetland plant distributions driven by climate.
- Models show good potential for identifying conservation strategies for wetland flora.
- Further refinement with local hydrological data may be needed for fine-scale predictions.
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