- Assess the status of habitat for species and develop habitat and corridor maps. Based on any of the existing or predicted landcover maps and a map of species-specific habitat suitability, the habitat assessment tool develops a map with five categories: primary habitat, secondary habitat, primary potential corridor, secondary potential corridor and unsuitable lands. Important parameters that control this process include the home range size, buffers based on sensitivity to unsuitable areas and the ability to cross gaps within home ranges and during dispersal. The resulting map can be used to estimate maximum populations (in some instances) and serves as a primary resource when planning for corridors.
- Analyze change in habitat and perform gap analysis by comparison to a map of protection status.
- Analyze landscape patterns and processes. The former assesses the current state of the land covers identified (e.g., fragmentation) while the latter expresses the character of the process of change.
- Refine range polygon maps of species distributions based on confidence mapping using a cluster analysis of environmental variables.
- Develop habitat suitability and species distribution maps. Modeling options are provided for cases with presence data only (Mahalanobis Typicality and Fuzzy Mahalanobis Probabilities), presence/absence data (Logistic Regression, Multi-Layer Perceptron), abundance data (Multiple Regression) and field study data with a specially tailored version of Fuzzy Set Multi-Criteria Evaluation.
- Develop maps of biodiversity measures. Using collections of species range polygons (such as those provided by NatureServe), this tool permits the development of maps of alpha diversity (local species richness), gamma diversity (regional richness), beta diversity (local individuality) and species compositional similarity.
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