New paper - Functionally relevant climate variables for arid lands: using climatic water deficit modeling to predict distribution of desert shrub vegetation

I'm pleased to announce that my paper "Functionally relevant climate variables for arid lands: using climatic water deficit modeling to predict distribution of desert shrub vegetation" got accepted in the Journal of Biogeography. The paper compares two different suites of climatic variables used for modeling the distributions (climatic envelopes, niches, habitat suitability) of eighteen shrub species in the Great Basin. The first approach uses the so-called bioclimatic variables commonly used today in species distribution modeling. The latter approach uses the climatic water deficit which uses a Thornthwaite water balance model to estimate potential and actual evapotranspiration and climatic water deficit (PET minus AET). We expanded upon the work of others by deriving new variables that more fully describe the  shape of the water balance climograph. Our study found that for these shrub species there was similar model performance using the two suites of variables. However, we believe that the climatic water deficit approach may prove to be more effective in studies that predict range shifts under climate change.

The paper compliments the Climatic Water Deficit Toolbox for ArcGIS which can be found HERE. Thank you co-authors Peter Weisberg, Jeanne Chambers, and Camie Dencker as well as those who provided critical reviews.

The paper can be downloaded HERE.