Canadian Forest Service Publications
Breaking the Habit(at). 2019. Coops, N.C., Wulder, M.A. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 34, No. 7, 585-587.
Year: 2019
Issued by: Pacific Forestry Centre
Catalog ID: 40123
Language: English
Availability: PDF (request by e-mail)
Available from the Journal's Web site. †
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2019.04.013
† This site may require a fee
Abstract
Earth Observation has revolutionised the mapping of species; however, habitat maps are often categorical, static representations of reality that result in issues relating to accurate change estimation and application to multiple species. We must break the habit of simplistic discrete classes of habitat and derive continuous, interval value,change-sensitive, habitat descriptions with an ability to drive hypotheses.
Plain Language Summary
Earth Observation has revolutionised the mapping of species, however habitat maps are often categorical, static representations of reality which results in issues relating to accurate change estimation and application to multiple species. We must break the habit of simplistic discrete classes of habitat and derive continuous, interval value, change sensitive, habitat descriptions with an ability to drive hypotheses. We need to break the habit of relying on simplistic discrete descriptions of habitat. We propose that developers and users of remotely sensed data for habitat based studies, recognise the importance of variables which are continuous rather than categorical in design, with interval or ratio values, are sensitive to change, with the ability to be used to drive hypothesis driven questions that capture the critical drivers of energy availability, and structural complexity on the behaviour, physiology and ultimately the health of the planet’s biodiversity.
