Journal article

Measuring impacts on species with models and metrics of varying ecological and computational complexity

Christopher D Hallam, Brendan A Wintle, Heini Kujala, Amy L Whitehead, Emily Nicholson

CONSERVATION BIOLOGY | WILEY | Published : 2020

Abstract

Approaches to assess the impacts of landscape disturbance scenarios on species range from metrics based on patterns of occurrence or habitat to comprehensive models that explicitly include ecological processes. The choice of metrics and models affects how impacts are interpreted and conservation decisions. We explored the impacts of 3 realistic disturbance scenarios on 4 species with different ecological and taxonomic traits. We used progressively more complex models and metrics to evaluate relative impact and rank of scenarios on the species. Models ranged from species distribution models that relied on implicit assumptions about environmental factors and species presence to highly paramete..

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grant


Awarded by ARC


Funding Acknowledgements

This work was made possible with funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Research Program (NERP) and NESP Threatened Species Recovery Research Hub. We also thank The Hunter and Central Coast Environmental Strategy and their staff for their data contributions and support. C.H. was supported by Australian Post Graduate Award, and H.K. and A.W. were supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grant (DP160101003) and the Australia Government's National Environmental Science Program. E.N. was supported by ARC Discovery DP170100609. C.H. also thanks the many colleagues who fielded questions and queries and provided inputs on countless drafts and coding problems. We especially thank N. Cadenhead for discussions on tiger quoll models, M. Mahoney, T. Penman, G. Heard, and T. Regan for discussions and information on green and golden bell frog models and SDM.