Global habitat suitability models of terrestrial mammals

Abstract

Detailed large-scale information on mammal distribution has often been lacking, hindering conservation efforts. We used the information from the 2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as a baseline for developing habitat suitability models for 5027 out of 5330 known terrestrial mammal species, based on their habitat relationships. We focused on the following environmental variables: land cover, elevation and hydrological features. Models were developed at 300 m resolution and limited to within species' known geographical ranges. A subset of the models was validated using points of known species occurrence. We conducted a global, fine-scale analysis of patterns of species richness. The richness of mammal species estimated by the overlap of their suitable habitat is on average one-third less than that estimated by the overlap of their geographical ranges. The highest absolute difference is found in tropical and subtropical regions in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia that are not covered by dense forest. The proportion of suitable habitat within mammal geographical ranges correlates with the IUCN Red List category to which they have been assigned, decreasing monotonically from Least Concern to Endangered. These results demonstrate the importance of fine-resolution distribution data for the development of global conservation strategies for mammals.

Future hotspots of terrestrial mammal loss

“…We considered only GLC2000 cover types of high suitability for species (primary habitat for the species). We excluded medium suitability habitat (suitability score of 1), where the species can be found but not live permanently [8], to avoid overestimating loss of habitat to expanding land uses. We estimated the amount of suitable area for each species in each 6 0 cell by multiplying the area occupied by land cover types suitable for the species (from Rondinini et al [8]) by the proportion of the cell within the species' altitudinal range extracted from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) database [1].…”

“…Habitat suitability and land use change models We projected the habitat suitability models described by Rondinini et al [8] for 5086 species of terrestrial mammals onto four scenarios of human development from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [9]. Two of the scenarios, TechnoGarden and Adapting Mosaic, assume that countries generally take a proactive approach to environmental challenges, with environmental policies implemented to preserve ecosystem services and biodiversity.…”

“…We adapted the habitat suitability scores for terrestrial mammals from Rondinini et al [8] based on the GLOB-COVER v. 2.1 classification [16] to the classification of the Global Land Cover 2000 model [14] used in the land use projections. Both legends are based on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Land Cover Classification System [17], which facilitated the building of a correspondence table (electronic supplementary material, table S1) based on descriptions of land cover classes.…”

Socio-economic and ecological impacts of global protected area expansion plans

“…ESH is a better proxy for the conservation status of a species than range size, as the latter typically contains extensive areas that are unsuitable or not occupied by the species. Terrestrial mammals are the only taxonomic group for which ESH can be estimated globally with published models [26]. The extent of native vegetation retained within a species range, while applicable to all taxonomic groups, would be a misleading measure of PA impact.…”

“…We used the IUCN Global Mammal Assessment habitat suitability models (classifying a given land-cover and land-use type as either suitable or not [22,26]) to quantify the ESH (km 2 ) within a species' geographical range, obtained from the IUCN Red List dataset [27]. We assessed the ESH change within each species' range owing to land-use change by 2020.…”