Spatial Uncertainty Analysis of Ecological Models

The authors evaluated the sensitivity of a habitat model and a source-sink population model to spatial uncertainty in landscapes with different statistical properties and for hypothetical species with different habitat requirements. Sequential indicator simulation generated alternative landscapes from a source map. Their results showed that spatial uncertainty was highest for landscapes in which suitable habitat was rare and spatially uncorrelated. Although, they were able to exert some control over the degree of spatial uncertainty by varying the sampling density drawn from the source map, intrinsic spatial properties (i.e., average frequency and degree of spatial autocorrelation) played a dominant role in determining variation among realized maps. To evaluate the ecological significance of landscape variation, they compared the variation in predictions from a simple habitat model to variation among landscapes for three species types. Spatial uncertainty in predictions of the amount of source habitat depended on both the spatial life history characteristics of the species and the statistical attributes of the synthetic landscapes. Species differences were greatest when the landscape contained a high proportion of suitable habitat. The predicted amount of source habitat was greater for edge-dependent (interior) species in landscapes with spatially uncorrelated(correlated) suitable habitat. A source-sink model demonstrated that, although variation among landscapes resulted in relatively little variation in overall population growth rate, this spatial uncertainty was sufficient in some situations, to produce qualitatively different predictions about population viability (i.e., population decline vs. increase)