Can we create biodiversity models with limited data?

Posted by Joaquín Hortal | Sep 27, 2022 | #globalchange, Destacada, English, News, Outreach | 0 |

In this video abstract we explain how can we measure the uncertainty coming from the limitations of biodiversity data, and how can it be incorporated into models for conservation decision-making. To do this we developed the first Maps of Biogeographical Ignorance, a tool that accounts for uncertainty in big-data biodiversity analysis. This allows making models of biodiversity trends and shifts in species distributions under global change together with fair estimates of their performance through space.

For more information you can check the our recent articles in Research Outreach and Ecography, and a podcast at researchpod.

About The Author

Joaquín Hortal

I am a biogeographer with broad interests in macroecology, community ecology, island biogeography, insect ecology, evolution, and biodiversity research. My main research aim is to determine why biodiversity – and in particular community structure – is geographically distributed the way it is, and to identify the processes that domain the spatial and temporal dynamics of ecological assemblages. I work as Scientific Researcher at the Department of Biogeography and Global Change of the Natural History Museum in Madrid (MNCN), a research institute of the Spanish Scientific Council (CSIC). I am also External Professor at the Departamento de Ecologia of the Federal University of Goiás (UFG) in Brazil, and Associate Researcher of the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (cE3c) of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon in Portugal.