Biodiversity habitats in transition: big data offer insights for species and communities

We apply the latest advancements in technology and statistics to forecast the effects of a changing climate on the abundance and distribution of America's wildlife

PREDICTING BIODIVERSITY WITH GENERALIZED JOINT ATTRIBUTE MODELS

With the support of NASA, we use satellites to monitor our changing planet, and through the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), we track how these changes will impact North America's species and wildlife communities

NASA-AIST 16 & 18 grants to Jennifer J. Swenson & James Clark

Nicholas School of Environment , Duke University


We offer online tools and maps to explore these changes, and the option to download this information for your own use

MAPS AND MODELS

Explore Our Research

Our maps are based on advances in Bayesian modeling, and unique in their focus on critical habitat. Below, you can dive under the hood of the maps and explore the model specifics or explore the maps by species taxa.


Beetles
Birds
Mammals
Trees

SUSTAINABLE SCIENCE

Our Data Streams

Long-term studies are drivers of scientific innovation. Combining the resources of NASA with those of the National Ecological Observatory Network and other open source data sets and citizen science projects, we can better predict the impacts of climate change on our country and world.

NEON Aerial Observation Platform

NEON provides hyperspectral and LiDAR data collected annually by an aerial observation platform. We use this data to better understand the local traits of ecosystems.

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NASA Satellite Remote Sensing

We use NASA satellites to understand how temperature, soil moisture, and the productivity of trees and other planets drives the structure and composition of communities

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The wonder of life

Biodiversity drives the natural world and ecosystem services

We use data collected by field assistants and research technicians from the Nationlal Ecological Observatory Network to develop our joint attribute models, and estimate where and when species will occur in the future under climate change

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Observations and interpolations

Our Changing Climate

We use climate information that is taken and interpolated from many sources, including local weather stations, satellites, and remote observations to model how climate shapes the distribution and abundance of species.

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A community of science

Our Research Team News and Updates

Ground beetle species abundance and habitat variable exploration

Click a site on the map to view its habitat conditions. Zoom in to filter sites shown in plots.

Terrain

Gap Fraction

Explore all variables in 3D space

Explore Change Over Time

Site-level Species Comparisons (click a site on the map to view plots)

Note: Abundance units are counts per trap night

Communities are identified using Gaussian Mixture Modeling with the mclust package in R. Clustering is done on relative abundance-weighted habitat suitability through time. The top map shows 2018 community distributions and the bottom map shows projected future shifts. Communities with similar relative abundance-weighted habitat suitability across the two maps share the same color. The buttons on the left correspond to each community mapped on the right. Select a button to learn how the abundance-weighted habitat suitability for each species is predicted to change across time within the selected community. The figure on the bottom left will then show the mean change in abundance-weighted habitat suitability for species predicted to see the largest change in abundance-weighted habitat suitability within the selected community.

Compositional Changes in Communities

To see how the species composition is changing select a community below.
The abundance-weighted habitat suitability of species within each community is also expected to change. For example, certain species might become more abundant, whereas other species may become rarer, even though overall the community composition indicates that this future community is similar enough to the current community to be considered the same. The figure below shows mean change in abundance-weighted habitat suitability from present for species within the selected community. Only species with the highest predicted change in abundance-weighted habitat suitability are shown. Units depend on the taxa: estimates of abundance per plot (counts, basal area, or cover)

Spatial Shifts in Communities

2018
Future