Our Goals
Our project team has 3 main objectives
(1)
Identify island oak's current climate niche to better understand which climate variables impact it most
(2)
Use information about island oak's current climate
niche to determine how climate change may
impact the location and total area of suitable habitat
(3)
Use our results about the extent and distribution
of current and future island oak habitat
to develop conservation plans and future
research objectives that will help make the species
more resilient to climate change
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Our Methods
MaxEnt is a species distribution model commonly used to predict the extent of a species' habitat and population distribution. Users choose which environmental predictor variables to include, which can help identify what drives species' distributions.
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We are using MaxEnt to determine the range of suitable climate habitat for island oak on three islands, and also to predict where its habitat will exist in the future.
