Strategic Decisions in Conservation: Using Species Distribution Modeling to Match Ecological Requirements to Available Habitat

Abstract

Identifying a species’ geographic range is the first step in understanding whether the range is changing or being disturbed, fragmented, or modified by some other process. A species’ range is constrained in part by specific environmental limiting factors that collectively define the environmental space of the species or its habitat needs. Other factors, such as dispersal and interspecific competition, further constrain a species’ geographic distribution. However, environmental space creates a primary restriction on a species’ current geographic distribution that is easily measured and analyzed. Understanding environmental conditions, how those conditions interact across geographic space, and how the spatial distribution of those conditions may change through time can be informative for making conservation decisions. This chapter addresses the following questions: (1) What environmental conditions make up suitable habitat for endemic species of the Colorado Plateau? (2) Where do those conditions currently exist on the landscape? (3) Will those conditions persist in the future?