Observer-oriented approach improves species distribution models from citizen science data

Ecology and Evolution
Pietro MilanesiMattia Menchetti

Abstract

Citizen science platforms are increasingly growing, and, storing a huge amount of data on species locations, they provide researchers with essential information to develop sound strategies for species conservation. However, the lack of information on surveyed sites (i.e., where the observers did not record the target species) and sampling effort (e.g., the number of surveys at a given site, by how many observers, and for how much time) strongly limit the use of citizen science data. Thus, we examined the advantage of using an observer-oriented approach (i.e., considering occurrences of species other than the target species collected by the observers of the target species as pseudo-absences and additional predictors relative to the total number of observations, observers, and days in which locations were collected in a given sampling unit, as proxies of sampling effort) to develop species distribution models. Specifically, we considered 15 mammal species occurring in Italy and compared the predictive accuracy of the ensemble predictions of nine species distribution models carried out considering random pseudo-absences versus observer-oriented approach. Through cross-validations, we found that the observer-oriented approach impro...Continue Reading

References

Mar 28, 2009·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·Steven J PhillipsSimon Ferrier
Jul 20, 2010·Environmental Monitoring and Assessment·Cathy C Conrad, Krista G Hilchey
Aug 16, 2014·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Lucie M BlandJon Bielby
Oct 29, 2015·Ambio·Steve KellingWesley M Hochachka
May 11, 2016·BMC Ecology·Gilberto PasinelliRaphaël Arlettaz
Apr 4, 2017·PloS One·Michael J O PocockHelen E Roy
Sep 20, 2017·PloS One·Elizabeth A HobsonAlejandro Salinas-Melgoza
Sep 5, 2019·Proceedings. Biological Sciences·Mattia MenchettiGerard Talavera

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Citations

Jul 30, 2021·Environmental Monitoring and Assessment·Radhika Jha, Kaushalendra Kumar Jha

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Software Mentioned

R
BIOMOD2
MAXNET
SPOCC
iNaturalist
eBird
RINAT
Atlas

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