Title
BrazilClim: The overcoming of limitations of pre-existing bioclimate data
Date Issued
15 March 2022
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Ramoni-Perazzi P.
Passamani M.
Thielen D.
Padovani C.
Publisher(s)
John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Wiley-Blackwell
Abstract
Species distribution modelling has become instrumental in assessing the influence of environmental conditions on the occurrence or abundance of taxa. The set of environmental layers used for this purpose is a crucial aspect, for which different climate-based (bioclimatic) datasets have been recently developed. These bioclimatic variables result from combinations of precipitation and temperatures surfaces. Here, we explored both the performance and possibility of improving some of the currently available bioclimatic databases, through an evaluation of the precipitation and temperatures surfaces used to generate them. For this purpose, we used a combination of statistic and graphic approaches. We focused on Brazil, not only due to its natural megadiversity, but also due to its continental size and orographic heterogeneity: an excellent ground for refining methods replicable elsewhere. We found a better match between the climatic data measured on-field and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM 3B43 v7) in the case of precipitation, and the surfaces provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the case of temperatures, sources uncommonly used for species niche modelling. We gauge-calibrated the best performing surfaces using machine-learning algorithms and generated corrected surfaces that allowed us to create BrazilClim: a database of bioclimatic variables, based on improved primary surfaces, which will result in more assertive predicted distributions and more actual pictures of the species' ecological requirements for megadiverse Brazil, an approach replicable elsewhere. All primary and bioclimatic surfaces generated for this study may be freely downloaded.
Start page
1645
End page
1659
Volume
42
Issue
3
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Investigación climática
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85114442779
Source
International Journal of Climatology
ISSN of the container
08998418
Sponsor(s)
We acknowledge the following institution for making publicly available the respective information used directly or indirectly in the present study: (a) the World Climate Research Program's Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, which provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals; (b) the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSL, Boulder, Colorado, USA, which provides the CPC Global Temperature data; (c) the Climate Hazards Center of the UC Santa Barbara, for the CHIRPS v 2.0 data; (d) the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), for the TRMM 3B43 data; (e) the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) of the NASA Earth Observing System, for the MOD11C3 data; (f) the Japan Meteorological Agency, for the JRA55 data; and (g) the National Institute of Meteorology of Brazil, for the climatic information measured on-field. The constructive comments from Dr. Stephen Barigye and three anonymous reviewers greatly improved the manuscript. PRP also thanks the scholarship from the Organization of American States through its Partnerships Program for Education and Training of the Coimbra Group of Brazilian Universities (OAS/PAEC/GCUB).
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus