Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Tags: Mahalanobis distance (X)

3 results (9ms)   

View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
The balance between economic needs and natural resource conservation will become more tenuous in the future as a result of a myriad of environmental stressors. We propose a methodology that can help guide forest management practices whenever adequate species locational data and quality forest or land use data exist. More specifically, the results of this study can be used to evaluate alternative land and silviculture management scenarios in terms of creating or maintaining high-quality forest habitat for a specific species. We used data collected on radiotelemetered black bears from 1988 to 2015 to develop a regional habitat model throughout Louisiana and Arkansas using Mahalanobis distance (D2) statistic. We created...
Interactions between climate change and non-native invasive species may combine to increase invasion risk to native ecosystems. Changing climate creates risk as new terrain becomes climatically suitable for invasion. However, climate change may also create opportunities for ecosystem restoration on invaded lands that become climatically unsuitable for invasive species. Here, I develop a bioclimatic envelope model for cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), a non-native invasive grass in the western US, based on its invaded distribution. The bioclimatic envelope model is based on the Mahalanobis distance using the climate variables that best constrain the species distribution. Of the precipitation and temperature variables...
Rather than simply enhancing invasion risk, climate change may also reduce invasive plant competitiveness if conditions become climatically unsuitable. Using bioclimatic envelope modeling, we show that climate change could result in both range expansion and contraction for five widespread and dominant invasive plants in the western United States. Yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) and tamarisk (Tamarix spp.) are likely to expand with climate change. Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and spotted knapweed (Centaurea biebersteinii) are likely to shift in range, leading to both expansion and contraction. Leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula) is likely to contract. The retreat of once-intractable invasive species could...