Stephen Tham MS-GIST Master's Presentation 2015 скачать в хорошем качестве

Stephen Tham MS-GIST Master's Presentation 2015

Modeling Pectis imberbis with Maximum Entropy habitat software in Southern Arizona madrean grasslands Madrean desert grasslands are subject to numerous environmental pressures and, without conservation efforts, biological diversity will fade quietly. Bearded Chinchweed (Pectis imberbis) is a Sonoran Desert grassland plant that faces many threats that include grazing, off road vehicles, and road expansion. This study creates a habitat suitability model for Pectis imberbis that improves conservation and reclamation efforts in Southern Arizona. This study creates a habitat suitability model for Pectis imberbis using maximum entropy modeling software, SAS statistical analysis, and ArcGIS. MaxEnt takes environmental layers such as climate, soils, digital elevation models, and vegetation rasters as well as georeferenced point locations and creates the range of a given species. MaxEnt is a powerful modeling platform that can create relationships between as few as 10 species point locations, model relationships between environmental rasters and point locations, create test statistics. Results show that Pectis imberbis conservation efforts should be concentrated around the U.S. Mexico border near Nogales, Arizona and on the southern edge of the Atascosa Mountains. In addition, temperature annual range, mean temperature of the coldest quarter, and warm season precipitation are factors that drive healthy Pectis imberbis habitat. With complete soils data and continuous vegetation data, a future study would be able to create a model that even more accurately predicts Pectis imberbis range. With more studies, biological diversity conservation can become more efficient with interactive cartographic products that can pinpoint exact areas that need conservation. More information at http://gis.arizona.edu/