Global climate change could have profound effects on the Earth’s biota, including large redistributions of tree species and forest types. We used DISTRIB, a deterministic regression tree analysis model, to examine environmental drivers related to current forest-species distributions and then model potential suitable habitat under five climate change scenarios associated with a doubling of atmos...

Many species have already experienced distributional shifts due to changing environmental conditions, and analyzing past shifts can help us to understand the influence of environmental stressors on a species as well as to analyze the effectiveness of conservation strategies. We aimed to (1) quantify regional habitat associations of the California gnatcatcher (Polioptila californica); (2) descri...

We combined observations of bobcats (Lynx rufus) from bowhunters with remotely-sensed data to build models that describe habitat and relative abundance of this species in the agricultural landscape of Iowa, USA. We calculated landscape composition and configuration from publicly available land cover, census, road, hydrologic, and elevation data. We used multiple regression models to examine cou...

The habitat characteristics of Torreya were investigated based on high resolution DEM and remote sensing image. The distribution of Torreya was mapped by visual interpretation of IKONOS image. The landform and PCA analysis results showed that curvature, altitude, aspect and slope were found to be the dominant features controlling spatial distribution pattern of Torreya. A certain degree moistur...

In most habitats, vegetation provides the main structure of the environment. This complexity can facilitate biodiversity and ecosystem services. Therefore, measures of vegetation structure can serve as indicators in ecosystem management. However, many structural measures are laborious and require expert knowledge. Here, we used consistent and convenient measures to assess vegetation structure o...

Seasonal variation in habitat selection by the mountain goat Oreamnos americanus is not well understood due to the difficulties of monitoring animal movement in all months of the year. The use of global positioning system (GPS) wildlife telemetry collars offers an opportunity to overcome this obstacle, however satellite acquisition problems associated with GPS wildlife telemetry collars create ...

Proxies are adopted to represent biodiversity patterns due to inadequate information for all taxa. Despite the wide use of proxies, their efficacy remains unclear. Previous analyses focused on overall species richness for fewer groups, affecting the generality and depth of inference. Biological taxa often exhibit very different habitat preferences. Habitat groupings may be an appropriate approa...

Behaviour is an important mechanism for accommodating rapid environmental changes. Understanding a species' capacity for behavioural plasticity is therefore a key, but understudied, aspect of developing tractable conservation and management plans under climate-change scenarios. Here, we quantified behavioural differences between American pikas (Ochotona princeps) living in an atypical, low-elev...