Spatial nonstationarity and the scale of species-environment relationships in the Mojave Desert, California, USA

Species distribution models (SDM) are used to quantify the relationship between some measure of species’ importance and environmental factors. They have become a fertile area of research interest at the confluence of spatial ecology and GIScience and have been used to study a wide range of biogeographical phenomena, ranging from invasive species, vector-borne diseases, and biodiversity. One issue that has recently been identified as important is spatial non-stationarity, which addresses how the speciesenvironment relationships vary across space.