https://youtu.be/DIrNac2Eauk We - Shirin Taherim Babak Naimi, Carsten Rahbek and Miguel B. Araújo - just published the study in Science Advances. We reviewed 240 reports of climate-related species-range shifts and classified them based on three criteria. We ask whether observed distributional shifts are compared against random expectations, whether multicausal factors are examined on . . . [ Read More ]
Climate change adaptation: complexity and uncertainty
I was asked to write an essay about climate change adaptation. The original version can be read here, but I copy below the full text too because the format is not the most user friendly: Adaptação à mudança num contexto de complexidade e incerteza O mundo encontra-se num processo de transformação profunda. Se as alterações climáticas e a perda de biodiversidade globais já estavam na agenda . . . [ Read More ]
Interview to Jornal de Negócios
Click in the images to read (in Portuguese). . . . [ Read More ]
Standards for distribution models in biodiversity assessments
https://youtu.be/iS31WaKMW_Y Would you have your cancer treatment be defined by one doctor supported by the opinion of two additional referees? Surely, you would hope the treatment to follow best practice standards reached by consensus among several doctors working in the field. Surprisingly, no such standards exist in models entering biodiversity assessments, but we now provide such . . . [ Read More ]
sdm R – New platform for species distributions modelling
Ecography has just published a new software not article by Babak Naimi and Miguel Araújo featuring the new sdm R platform for species distributions modelling. Sdm R is an object-oriented, reproducible and extensible, platform for running models of species distribtions. It uses individual species and community-based approaches, enabling ensembles of models to be fitted and evaluated, to . . . [ Read More ]
How complex should models be?
Photo by Stef Lewandowski and licensed under creative commons There is a longstanding discussion about the degree of model complexity that species distributions models have to have in order to maximise the usefulness of the predictions. A discussion that started with observations that more complex models were fitting species distributions data better than simpler models. See for example, . . . [ Read More ]
2015 Course on Species Distributions Modelling
SDM model for the Caribbean spiny pocket mouse Source: Radosavljevic, A. and R. P. Anderson. 2014. J. Biogeogr 41:629-643 We are organising a new course on “Species distributions models: concepts, methods, applications, and challenges”, which aims to introduce the fundamental concepts underpinning ecological niche models (ENM), describe the methods currently in use, and discuss the strengths . . . [ Read More ]
Raquel Garcia successfully finished her PhD
Congratulations to Raquel Garcia who successfully defended her outstanding PhD thesis at the University of Copenhagen. Raquel’s thesis–Uncertainty in projected impacts of climate change on biodiversity: A focus on African vertebrates–was supervised by Miguel B. Araújo, co-supervised by Mar Cabeza, and funded through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). The evaluation panel . . . [ Read More ]
PhD Course in Species Distributions Modelling
SDM model for the Caribbean spiny pocket mouse Source: Radosavljevic, A. and R. P. Anderson. 2014. J. Biogeogr 41:629-643 We are organising a new course at Silwood Park (Imperial College) on “Species distributions models: concepts, methods, applications, and challenges”, which aims to introduce the fundamental concepts underpinning ENMs, describe the methods currently in use, and discuss the . . . [ Read More ]
New Research Associate Babak Naimi
Congratulations to Dr. Babak Naimi who has just been appointed Research Associate at the Imperial College London to work under the Grand Challenges in Ecosystems and Environment initiative in Miguel Araújo's lab for a period of three years. Babak recently read for his PhD at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and was also, until recently, Assistant Professor of Geo-Informatics at the . . . [ Read More ]