Methods for cross-scale species distribution modelling

Knowledge of how to combine information about environmental factors that determine species distributions across spatial scales is indispensable for effective conservation and management. Researchers have tested three methodological approaches to combine distributional and environmental data for Finnish butterflies. They found that using the best information available at each spatial scale for the development of species distribution models and combining the results by simple multiplication significantly increases the predictive ability. This study highlights the notable potential of multi-scale approaches and demonstrates that the search for environmental correlates with species’ distributions must not only be addressed at an appropriate spatial scale, but also should be combined across the spatial scales due to the inherent hierarchy of processes where the higher levels constrain the lower levels.

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