Project Funding: 2011 - 2017

NRA: 2010 NASA: Climate and Biological Response: Research and Applications   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Global insights into the magnitude of the biotic response to climatic change are desperately needed. It is therefore imperative to make full use of all available biodiversity distribution data over the broadest possible spatial and temporal extents. Earlier efforts at linking climate variability and changes to biological responses suffer from a lack of spatially and temporally consistent environmental data layers. The proposed project is able to build on existing collaborative efforts and initiatives to address this need. Specifically, the project has four objectives: 1) Layer development. We will apply TOPS to produce global biophysical data layers derived from MODIS, Landsat, and observations from the global network of surface meteorological stations. In addition, we will use a novel approach to fuse MODIS data and climate station information to develop global layers of precipitation and temperature at a monthly 1km resolution, extending from 1971 to 2010. The fusion of spatially continuous satellite data and meteorological station data, as opposed to statistical interpolation techniques alone, will yield layers that allow more rigorous change assessment and species distribution modeling, especially in areas where biodiversity is the highest (e.g. the tropics). For 3-4 periods we will also derive 10-class continuous land cover dataset at a 1km resolution from a fusion of Landsat and MODIS for land cover change assessment. 2) Remote-sensing data based species distribution modeling. First we will use the remotely sensed layers developed in Objective 1 to provide temporally precise environmental annotations to biodiversity point occurrence data (focus: terrestrial vertebrates) made available in large quantities through services such as GBIF and VertNet. These annotated records can then be used to model species ecological niches and distributions using well established methods. We will compare the relative performance of satellite data to fused layers and to interpolated layers for successfully capturing species distributions. 3) Changes in species geographic and environmental distributions 1971-2010. After selecting and quality-controlling species with sufficient data in GBIF/VertNet, we will perform a geographic range and environmental niche assessment for > 1000 focal species drawn from many regions of the world. We will determine how these species’ niches and ranges have varied in relation to climatic changes over two 20-year time periods (1971-1990 and 1991-2010) using the monthly 1km fused data layers produced in Objective 1. The final out will be an assessment of the magnitude, geographic and taxonomic variation in species responses to recent climate change. 4) Change in environment and focal species occurrences in reserves for 1971-2010. For a global selection of protected areas and all SIGEO sites we will first assess the magnitude of observed climatic changes within these reserve utilizing new remote sense layers. Second, we will compare changes in the distribution of focal species predicted to occur in those reserves between the two twenty year time periods to create a scorecard showing climatic impacts on these areas. The proposed project offers tremendous synergies with existing global biodiversity efforts and will add a vital environmental change and remote sensing dimension to them, thus strongly advancing the contribution of NASA to the biodiversity community. Its goals are strongly aligned with the high-priority research tasks of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). The project outcomes of production, analysis, and distribution of global environmental data layers, enriched biodiversity information, probabilistic reserve species lists and biological change assessments will improve scientific knowledge and facilitate natural resource management in multiple significant ways. All products and metadata will be freely distributed in interoperable formats.

Publications:

Ballesteros-Mejia, L., Kitching, I. J., Jetz, W., Beck, J. 2016. Putting insects on the map: near-global variation in sphingid moth richness along spatial and environmental gradients. Ecography. 40(6), 698-708. DOI: 10.1111/ecog.02438

Barbet-Massin, M., Jetz, W. 2014. A 40-year, continent-wide, multispecies assessment of relevant climate predictors for species distribution modelling. Diversity and Distributions. 20(11), 1285-1295. DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12229

Barbet-Massin, M., Jetz, W. 2015. The effect of range changes on the functional turnover, structure and diversity of bird assemblages under future climate scenarios. Global Change Biology. 21(8), 2917-2928. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12905

Belmaker, J., Jetz, W. 2012. Regional Pools and Environmental Controls of Vertebrate Richness. The American Naturalist. 179(4), 512-523. DOI: 10.1086/664610

Belmaker, J., Jetz, W. 2015. Relative roles of ecological and energetic constraints, diversification rates and region history on global species richness gradients. Ecology Letters. 18(6), 563-571. DOI: 10.1111/ele.12438

Domisch, S., Amatulli, G., Jetz, W. 2015. Near-global freshwater-specific environmental variables for biodiversity analyses in 1 km resolution. Scientific Data. 2(1). DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2015.73

Domisch, S., Wilson, A. M., Jetz, W. 2016. Model-based integration of observed and expert-based information for assessing the geographic and environmental distribution of freshwater species. Ecography. 39(11), 1078-1088. DOI: 10.1111/ecog.01925

Jarzyna, M. A., Jetz, W. 2016. A near half-century of temporal change in different facets of avian diversity. Global Change Biology. 23(8), 2999-3011. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13571

Jarzyna, M. A., Jetz, W. 2016. Detecting the Multiple Facets of Biodiversity. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 31(11), 887. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2016.08.012

Jarzyna, M. A., Jetz, W. 2018. Taxonomic and functional diversity change is scale dependent. Nature Communications. 9(1). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04889-z

Jetz, W., Cavender-Bares, J., Pavlick, R., Schimel, D., Davis, F. W., Asner, G. P., Guralnick, R., Kattge, J., Latimer, A. M., Moorcroft, P., Schaepman, M. E., Schildhauer, M. P., Schneider, F. D., Schrodt, F., Stahl, U., Ustin, S. L. 2016. Erratum: Monitoring plant functional diversity from space. Nature Plants. 2(1). DOI: 10.1038/nplants.2016.39

Jetz, W., Fine, P. V. A. 2012. Global Gradients in Vertebrate Diversity Predicted by Historical Area-Productivity Dynamics and Contemporary Environment. PLoS Biology. 10(3), e1001292. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001292

Jetz, W., Freckleton, R. P. 2015. Towards a general framework for predicting threat status of data-deficient species from phylogenetic, spatial and environmental information. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 370(1662), 20140016. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0016

Jetz, W., McGeoch, M. A., Guralnick, R., Ferrier, S., Beck, J., Costello, M. J., Fernandez, M., Geller, G. N., Keil, P., Merow, C., Meyer, C., Muller-Karger, F. E., Pereira, H. M., Regan, E. C., Schmeller, D. S., Turak, E. 2019. Essential biodiversity variables for mapping and monitoring species populations. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 3(4), 539-551. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-019-0826-1

Jetz, W., Thomas, G. H., Joy, J. B., Hartmann, K., Mooers, A. O. 2012. The global diversity of birds in space and time. Nature. 491(7424), 444-448. DOI: 10.1038/nature11631

Jetz, W., Thomas, G. H., Joy, J. B., Redding, D. W., Hartmann, K., Mooers, A. O. 2014. Global Distribution and Conservation of Evolutionary Distinctness in Birds. Current Biology. 24(9), 919-930. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.03.011

Kays, R., Crofoot, M. C., Jetz, W., Wikelski, M. 2015. Terrestrial animal tracking as an eye on life and planet. Science. 348(6240). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa2478

Keil, P., Belmaker, J., Wilson, A. M., Unitt, P., Jetz, W. 2012. Downscaling of species distribution models: a hierarchical approach. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. 4(1), 82-94. DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-210x.2012.00264.x

Keil, P., Jetz, W. 2014. Downscaling the environmental associations and spatial patterns of species richness. Ecological Applications. 24(4), 823-831. DOI: 10.1890/13-0805.1

Keil, P., Storch, D., Jetz, W. 2015. On the decline of biodiversity due to area loss. Nature Communications. 6(1). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9837

Keil, P., Wilson, A. M., Jetz, W. 2014. Uncertainty, priors, autocorrelation and disparate data in downscaling of species distributions. Diversity and Distributions. 20(7), 797-812. DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12199

Ko, C., Schmitz, O. J., Barbet-Massin, M., Jetz, W. 2014. Dietary guild composition and disaggregation of avian assemblages under climate change. Global Change Biology. 20(3), 790-802. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12419

Ko, C., Schmitz, O. J., Jetz, W. 2016. The limits of direct community modeling approaches for broad-scale predictions of ecological assemblage structure. Biological Conservation. 201, 396-404. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2016.07.026

Merow, C., Wilson, A. M., Jetz, W. 2016. Integrating occurrence data and expert maps for improved species range predictions. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 26(2), 243-258. DOI: 10.1111/geb.12539

Meyer, C., Jetz, W., Guralnick, R. P., Fritz, S. A., Kreft, H., Gillespie, T. 2016. Range geometry and socio-economics dominate species-level biases in occurrence information. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 25(10), 1181-1193. DOI: 10.1111/geb.12483

Meyer, C., Kreft, H., Guralnick, R., Jetz, W. 2015. Global priorities for an effective information basis of biodiversity distributions. Nature Communications. 6(1). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9221

Parmentier, B., McGill, B. J., Wilson, A. M., Regetz, J., Jetz, W., Guralnick, R., Tuanmu, M., Schildhauer, M. 2015. Using multi-timescale methods and satellite-derived land surface temperature for the interpolation of daily maximum air temperature in Oregon. International Journal of Climatology. 35(13), 3862-3878. DOI: 10.1002/joc.4251

Parmentier, B., McGill, B., Wilson, A., Regetz, J., Jetz, W., Guralnick, R., Tuanmu, M., Robinson, N., Schildhauer, M. 2014. An Assessment of Methods and Remote-Sensing Derived Covariates for Regional Predictions of 1 km Daily Maximum Air Temperature. Remote Sensing. 6(9), 8639-8670. DOI: 10.3390/rs6098639

Pigot, A. L., Tobias, J. A., Jetz, W. 2016. Energetic Constraints on Species Coexistence in Birds. PLOS Biology. 14(3), e1002407. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002407

Powers, R. P., Jetz, W. 2019. Global habitat loss and extinction risk of terrestrial vertebrates under future land-use-change scenarios. Nature Climate Change. 9(4), 323-329. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0406-z

Quintero, I., Keil, P., Jetz, W., Crawford, F. W. 2015. Historical Biogeography Using Species Geographical Ranges. Systematic Biology. 64(6), 1059-1073. DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syv057

Robinson, N., Regetz, J., Guralnick, R. P. 2014. EarthEnv-DEM90: A nearly-global, void-free, multi-scale smoothed, 90m digital elevation model from fused ASTER and SRTM data. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. 87, 57-67. DOI: 10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2013.11.002

Rosauer, D. F., Jetz, W. 2014. Phylogenetic endemism in terrestrial mammals. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 24(2), 168-179. DOI: 10.1111/geb.12237

Storch, D., Keil, P., Jetz, W. 2012. Universal species-area and endemics-area relationships at continental scales. Nature. 488(7409), 78-81. DOI: 10.1038/nature11226

Tuanmu, M., Jetz, W. 2014. A global 1-km consensus land-cover product for biodiversity and ecosystem modelling. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 23(9), 1031-1045. DOI: 10.1111/geb.12182

Tuanmu, M., Jetz, W. 2015. A global, remote sensing-based characterization of terrestrial habitat heterogeneity for biodiversity and ecosystem modelling. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 24(11), 1329-1339. DOI: 10.1111/geb.12365

Weigelt, P., Jetz, W., Kreft, H. 2013. Bioclimatic and physical characterization of the world's islands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 110(38), 15307-15312. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1306309110

Wetzel, F. T., Beissmann, H., Penn, D. J., Jetz, W. 2013. Vulnerability of terrestrial island vertebrates to projected sea-level rise. Global Change Biology. 19(7), 2058-2070. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12185

Wilson, A. M., Jetz, W. 2016. Remotely Sensed High-Resolution Global Cloud Dynamics for Predicting Ecosystem and Biodiversity Distributions. PLOS Biology. 14(3), e1002415. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002415

Wilson, A. M., Parmentier, B., Jetz, W. 2014. Systematic land cover bias in Collection 5 MODIS cloud mask and derived products -- A global overview. Remote Sensing of Environment. 141, 149-154. DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2013.10.025

2015 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Unpacking the cross-scale niche: a multi-grain modeling framework to evaluate scale-dependence in species-environment relationships   --   (Katherine Mertes, Walter Jetz)   [abstract]
• Environmental and biodiversity representativeness of global protected area network   --   (Mao-Ning Tuanmu, Walter Jetz)   [abstract]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Biological Diversity & Ecological Conservation (BDEC) Project Profile