Translation, Value, and Space: Theorizing an Ethnographic and Engaged Environmental Anthropology

In this article, I argue for placing the politics of translation and theories of value and spatial production at the center of environmental anthropology. For the past ten years, the Gimi-speaking peoples living in Maimafu village, Papua New Guinea, have taken part in an integrated conservation and development project attempting to foster a local system of valuing "nature" by tying biological diversity to economic markets through the creation of "eco-enterprises." However, the project fails to consider how Gimi produce, theorize, transmit, and express knowledge. Using ethnographic material concerned with hunting and song composition, I show that Gimi understand their forests to be part of a series of transactive dialectical relationships that work to produce identity and space. I also demonstrate that, as part of this project, Gimi social relations with their forests have been translated in ways that fit their beliefs into generic and easily understandable categories. This has been detrimental to the conservation project and it is politically problematic for an engaged environmental anthropology.     

Local Management of Mangrove Forests in the Philippines: Successful Conservation or Efficient Resource Exploitation?

Recent environmental narratives suggest that local people are effective stewards of forest resources. Local restoration and management of mangrove forests, in particular, are now widely advocated as a solution to achieve both economic and environmental conservation goals. This paper presents findings from a study of 2 coastal sites in the Philippines that are renowned and often showcased as success stories in community-based, mangrove reforestation and management. These cases are especially intriguing because local tree planting and management emerged in both areas long before governments and nongovernment organizations began to promote such activities. These management systems are a successful economic innovation in that planted mangroves protect homes and fish pond dykes from wave and wind damage, and the production of high-value construction wood is dramatically enhanced through intensive plantation management. Mangrove plantations are an efficient alternative to harvesting from unplanted, natural mangroves and their spread may reduce harvesting pressures on existing forests. However, mangrove plantations are structurally and compositionaly very different from unplanted forests, a finding of particular concern given that such plantations are increasingly encroaching into and replacing natural forests. Furthermore, planted forests are not typically viewed by planters in terms of their environmental conservation values and are frequently cut and cleared to make space for alternative uses, especially fish farming and residential settlement. The suggestion that these local mangrove management systems are successful for conservation thus needs to be qualified.     

Villains,Victims, and Conservationists? Representational Frameworks and Sustainable Development on the Transamazon Highway

Literature on conservation and land reform politics concentrates on how local actors are characterized dualistically as either environmental villains or heroes. Here I present three different frames as exemplary of the multiple narratives at stake as actors create environmental subjectivities in relation to political opportunity, based primarily on ethnographic field research in a case study of Projects for Sustainable Development (PDSs) located in the Transamazon highway region of the Brazilian Amazon. I argue that local identities are mediated by their shifting relationships with other interested actors. Through a historical analysis of different frames of identity and land use, I examine how and why representation struggles occurred and shifted, based upon the ways in which powerful actors took advantage of political opportunities. This led to indeterminate outcomes in different local struggles across the region. In the process, local voices were often undermined in favor of interests of more powerful outsiders. The political process through which such struggles occur yield geographically and socially uneven effects contingent upon key events and contestation from disparate groups.     

Environmental drivers of Cheirogaleidae population density: Remarkable resilience of Madagascar’s smallest lemurs to habitat degradation

AimGlobal animal populations are in decline due to destruction and degradation of their natural habitat. Understanding the factors that determine the distribution and density of threatened animal populations is therefore now a crucial component of their study and conservation. The Cheirogaleidae are a diverse family of small‐bodied, nocturnal lemurs that are widespread throughout the forests of Madagascar. However, many cheirogaleid lemurs are now highly threatened with extinction and the environmental factors that determine their distribution and population density are still little known. Here, I investigated the environmental drivers of Cheirogaleidae population density at genus level.LocationVarious forest sites across Madagascar.MethodsI investigated how six environmental variables affect Cheirogaleidae population density at the genus level via random‐effect meta‐analyses. I then used a generalized linear mixed‐effects model to identify the primary predictors of Cheirogaleidae population density. Finally, I investigated how the population density of this family of lemurs varies between protected and unprotected areas of Madagascar via a GLM analysis.ResultsMy results indicate that the relationships between the tested environmental factors and population density are genus‐specific among the Cheirogaleidae. Rather remarkably, the density of Microcebus appears to have a profoundly positive relationship with anthropogenic disturbance and a negative relationship with forest cover, a finding that is also reflected by larger population densities within unprotected areas in comparison with localities within Madagascar''s protected area network.Main ConclusionsThe results of this study are highly encouraging for the conservation of the Cheirogaleidae and highlight the remarkable resilience of these lemurs to habitat degradation and anthropogenic activity. However, this study also outlines the dearth of knowledge that we have for many species, and why these data are urgently needed to understand the biogeography and ecology of threatened animal populations and implement successful conservation.     

Local people value environmental services provided by forested parks

Garnering support from local people is critical for maintaining ecologically viable and functional protected areas. However, empirical data illustrating local people’s awareness of the importance of nature’s services is limited; hence possibly impeding effective ecosystem (environmental)-services based conservation efforts. Using data from five protected forests in four developing Southeast Asian countries, we provide evidence that local people living near parks value a wide range of environmental services, including cultural, provisioning, and regulating services, provided by the forests. Local people with longer residency valued environmental services more. Educated as well as poor people valued forest ecosystem services more. Conservation education has some influence on people’s environmental awareness. For conservation endeavors to be successful, large-scale transmigration programs should be avoided and local people must be provided with alternative sustenance opportunities and basic education in addition to environmental outreach to reduce their reliance on protected forests and to enhance conservation support.     

Controlling for conservation in genome-wide DNA methylation studies

Background

A commonplace analysis in high-throughput DNA methylation studies is the comparison of methylation extent between different functional regions, computed by averaging methylation states within region types and then comparing averages between regions. For example, it has been reported that methylation is more prevalent in coding regions as compared to their neighboring introns or UTRs, leading to hypotheses about novel forms of epigenetic regulation.

Results

We have identified and characterized a bias present in these seemingly straightforward comparisons that results in the false detection of differences in methylation intensities across region types. This bias arises due to differences in conservation rates, rather than methylation rates, and is broadly present in the published literature. When controlling for conservation at coding start sites the differences in DNA methylation rates disappear. Moreover, a re-evaluation of methylation rates at intronexon junctions reveals that the magnitude of previously reported differences is greatly exaggerated. We introduce two correction methods to address this bias, an inferencebased matrix completion algorithm and an averaging approach, tailored to address different underlying biological questions. We evaluate how analysis using these corrections affects the detection of differences in DNA methylation across functional boundaries.

Conclusions

We report here on a bias in DNA methylation comparative studies that originates in conservation rate differences and manifests itself in the false discovery of differences in DNA methylation intensities and their extents. We have characterized this bias and its broad implications, and show how to control for it so as to enable the study of a variety of biological questions.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1604-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Developing regional conservation priorities using red lists: a hypothetical example from the Swiss lowlands

This paper investigates how different prioritizations of species for conservation can affect both the number of breeding individuals that receive protection and the distribution of conservation attention among different types of habitat. I use as a study example three red lists of the avifauna of Kanton Zürich in northern Switzerland. Species are weighted based on their placement in different red list categories to represent differences in species' relative conservation value. I examine how these weightings affect the number of breeding pairs benefiting from increasing conservation effort. Conservation effort is defined as the number of ranked land parcels that receive conservation attention, be it through habitat enhancement, protection, or other measures. I rank parcels' conservation value based on the number of weighted breeding pairs estimated for each parcel. Not surprisingly, the number of category-1, -2 and -3 breeding pairs that receive benefits varies greatly when different red lists are used. Changes in the relative conservation value of species in different categories influences both the number of breeding pairs and the number of parcels to receive conservation attention. The effect of increasing conservation effort on the number of breeding pairs and the proportion of each landscape type receiving attention also vary when different red lists and relative conservation values are used to determine conservation priorities. Use of the official red list published by a governmental body (Bundesamt für Umwelt, Wald und Landschaft, Bern, Switzerland) results in more emphasis on conservation in agricultural landscape than did use of either of the other two lists. The process of prioritization of sites for conservation should evaluate the effects of variation in both the relative conservation value of species and species categorization that may arise due to incomplete data and variation in opinion.     

Preparation for propagation: understanding germination of giwa (Astrocaryum standleyanum), wagara (Sabal mauritiiformis), and eba (Socratea exorrhiza) for future cultivation

This article reports on domestication as a simple way to promote plant conservation in indigenous villages. We developed simple methods to germinate or transplant palm species central to the traditional livelihood of two Panamanian nations: the Emberá and the Wounaan. The target species were Astrocaryum standleyanum, Sabal mauritiiformis and Socratea exorrhiza. The youngest fully expanded leaf of Astrocaryum provides prime material for weaving baskets that are a major source of income for the Emberá and Wounaan communities of Panamá. Sabal and Socratea are the two most important species for traditional architecture. They provide, respectively, the roofs and floor of the round, open-sided Emberá–Wounaan houses. For each of the three target species, different treatments were tested to obtain germination rates as high as possible. Regardless of the treatments to which seeds were subjected, germination of Astrocaryum was difficult and slow. It took 13 months to break dormancy and the germination success was around 40%. However, the two other species, especially Socratea, were easy to germinate. Our project succeeded in introducing the practice of nursery and cultivation in over 20 indigenous villages of Panamá. It is hoped that such forestry approaches to conservation can help protect important components of biodiversity while giving access to the resource to people whose lifestyle depends on them.     

Mycetophilidae (Diptera), an insect group vulnerable to forestry practices? A comparison of clearcut,managed and semi-natural spruce forests in southern Norway

The mycetophilid fauna and environmental variables were studied at 15 sites within a spruce forest in southern Norway. There were five replications of each of the following categories: semi-natural forests, clearcuts, and managed forests (clearcut 70–120 years ago). Clearcutting seems to induce a long lasting effect on the Mycetophilidae fauna. The semi-natural forests were more speciesrich and contained more potentially rare species than the two other categories. Even though managed forests and clearcuts differed in faunal composition, their species richness was not significantly different. Continuity is probably a main factor for maintaining the diversity of Mycetophilidae species. Lumping the 15 sites together, the number of species was strongly correlated with the (temporal) continuity of tree cover and substrates, which may reflect an increased diversity of fungal habitats both in dead wood and on the ground. The degree of continuity was recognized by means of indicator species of fungi, lichen and vascular plants. The amount of dead wood was correlated with the species diversity, but was probably dependent on the continuity factor, since clearcuts with much dead wood had relatively fewer species.Important elements in a strategy for conservation of the diversity of mycetophilid species seem to be: (i) to identify and protect the remnant patches of forests with long continuity, (ii) as far as possible, to practice timber harvesting in earlier clearcut forests instead of semi-natural forests.     

Smallholder perceptions and communication gaps shape East African riparian ecosystems

Human livelihood needs and nature conservation often contradict. Yet, healthy ecosystems are crucial for human livelihood quality. The semi-arid regions of East Africa suffer under demographic pressure and soil depletion. Ecosystem degradation becomes particularly visible along rivers in semiarid regions of south-east Kenya, where former pristine riparian forests have been transformed into agricultural fields and settlements with negative effects on ecosystem services. In this study, we aim to understand how local smallholders perceive the challenges for the riparian ecosystems and what factors affect their engagement in environmental conservation. We surveyed about 200 farmers and performed expert interviews with representatives from governmental institutions from the field of land- and resource management along Nzeeu River in south-east Kenya. We assessed the level of education, land use practices, environmental knowledge, attitudes and the willingness to contribute to nature conservation. We tested for spatial bias to understand smallholders’ perceptions on environmental challenges. Our data show that land division due to inheritance is not perceived as a problem by the farmers. However, owners holding?<?1 ha of land property are less willing to spare some of their land for conservation, as opposed to those holding land plots above this size. Despite a high level of general willingness to conserve ecosystems, our data underline that local people hardly actively engage in conservation action. Furthermore, our data indicate a communication gap between local smallholders and regional governmental officers as well as overconfidence in mass media through the radio which can contradict successful adoption of pro-environment behavior. Sustainable land management in our study area is not a matter of education, but depends from the size of land property. There is an urgent need to bridge this communication gap, as a prerequisite to improve sustainable land management.     

Restoration of living environment based on vegetation ecology: Theory and practice

The foundation of ecological restoration is how to preserve biocoenoses (i.e. functional ecosystems) and how to restore and reconstruct them where they were destroyed. One of the most important challenges is the restoration of complex, multilayer forests representing the potential natural vegetation. Native forests have functions in disaster mitigation and environmental protection, as well as providing the basis of existence for local people and maintaining gene pools for the future. Through vegetation surveys in Japan and South-east Asia, we have established basic principles in vegetation-ecological restoration of forests. We have been restoring expected disaster-mitigation and environmental protection forests, as experimental reforestation projects, since the 1970s at more than 750 sites throughout the 3000km long Japanese Archipelago, and since the 1980s in parts of South-east Asia, China and South America. The restoration movement has spread from a local activity to a global movement. We aim for the sustainable development of human society through ecological restoration of living environments.     

Ant community structure during forest succession in a subtropical forest in South-East China

Understanding how communities respond to environmental gradients is critical to predict responses of species to changing habitat conditions such as in regenerating secondary habitats after human land use. In this study, ground-living ants were sampled with pitfall traps in 27 plots in a heterogeneous and diverse subtropical forest to test if and how a broad set of environmental variables including elevation, successional age, and tree species richness influence ant diversity and community composition. In total, 13,441 ant individuals belonging to 71 species were found. Ant abundance was unrelated to all environmental variables. Rarefied ant species richness was negatively related to elevation, and Shannon diversity decreased with shrub cover. There was considerable variation in ant species amongst plots, associated with elevation, successional age, and variables related to succession such as shrub cover. It is shown that younger secondary forests may support a species-rich and diverse community of ants in subtropical forests even though the species composition between younger and older forests is markedly different. These findings confirm the conservation value of secondary subtropical forests, which is critical because subtropical forests have been heavily exploited by human activities globally. However, the findings also confirm that old-growth forest should have priority in conservation as it supports a distinct ant community. Our study identifies a set of ant species which are associated with successional age and may thus potentially assist local conservation planning.     

Resilient Cosmologies: Water Deities and Divine Agency in Post-Mao China

ABSTRACT

This article explores ritual practices among the Premi people in Southwest China at the beginning of the new millennium. Living in the periphery of Tibetan, Han Chinese and other Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups, Premi villagers have continued to keep an understanding of how the world works that is markedly different from their neighbours. The all-encompassing economic development of China is posing new challenges to the intangible entities in Premi cosmology. In its management of forests, waterways or birth control, the Chinese state is increasingly interfering with Premi ways of dealing with their surroundings. The chapter proposes to focus on the way one category of intangible entities of Premi cosmology, the lwéjabu or water deities, are seen as acting towards these challenges, rather than on the underlying ontological changes. An event where a member of a neighbouring ethnic group becomes an unwitting participant in a Premi medium séance makes the case for approaching extra-human forms of agency by beginning with the ‘work’ or ‘effect’ of the divine entities.     

Evaluating the effectiveness of retention forestry to enhance biodiversity in production forests of Central Europe using an interdisciplinary,multi‐scale approach

Retention forestry, which retains a portion of the original stand at the time of harvesting to maintain continuity of structural and compositional diversity, has been originally developed to mitigate the impacts of clear‐cutting. Retention of habitat trees and deadwood has since become common practice also in continuous‐cover forests of Central Europe. While the use of retention in these forests is plausible, the evidence base for its application is lacking, trade‐offs have not been quantified, it is not clear what support it receives from forest owners and other stakeholders and how it is best integrated into forest management practices. The Research Training Group ConFoBi (Conservation of Forest Biodiversity in Multiple‐use Landscapes of Central Europe) focusses on the effectiveness of retention forestry, combining ecological studies on forest biodiversity with social and economic studies of biodiversity conservation across multiple spatial scales. The aim of ConFoBi is to assess whether and how structural retention measures are appropriate for the conservation of forest biodiversity in uneven‐aged and selectively harvested continuous‐cover forests of temperate Europe. The study design is based on a pool of 135 plots (1 ha) distributed along gradients of forest connectivity and structure. The main objectives are (a) to investigate the effects of structural elements and landscape context on multiple taxa, including different trophic and functional groups, to evaluate the effectiveness of retention practices for biodiversity conservation; (b) to analyze how forest biodiversity conservation is perceived and practiced, and what costs and benefits it creates; and (c) to identify how biodiversity conservation can be effectively integrated in multi‐functional forest management. ConFoBi will quantify retention levels required across the landscape, as well as the socio‐economic prerequisites for their implementation by forest owners and managers. ConFoBi's research results will provide an evidence base for integrating biodiversity conservation into forest management in temperate forests.     

Predicting rarity and decline in animals,plants, and mushrooms based on species attributes and indicator groups

In decisions on nature conservation measures, we depend largely on knowledge of the relationship between threats and environmental factors for a very limited number of species groups, with relevant environmental factors often being deduced from the relationship between threat and species traits. But can relationships between traits and levels of threats be identified across species from completely different taxonomic groups; and how accurately do well-known taxonomic groups indicate levels of threat in other species groups? To answer these questions, we first made a list of 152 species attributes of morphological and demographic traits and habitat requirements. Based on these attributes we then grew random forests of decision trees for 1183 species in the 18 different taxonomic groups for which we had Red Lists available in the Netherlands, using these to classify animals, plants, and mushrooms according to their rarity and decline. Finally, we grew random forests for four species groups often used as indicator groups to study how well the relationship between attribute and decline within these groups reflected that relationship within the larger taxonomic group to which these groups belong. Correct classification of rarity based on all attributes was as high as 88% in animals, 85% in plants, and 94% in mushrooms and correct classification of decline was 78% in animals, 69% in plants, and 70% in mushrooms. Vertebrates indicated decline in all animals well, as did birds for all vertebrates and vascular plants for all plants. However, butterflies poorly indicated decline in all insects. Random forests are a useful tool to relate rarity and decline to species attributes thereby making it possible to generalize rarity and decline to a wider set of species groups. Random forests can be used to estimate the level of threat to complete faunas and floras of countries or regions. In regions like the Netherlands, conservation policy based on attributes known to be relevant for the decline to birds, vertebrates or plants will probably also impact all aboveground terrestrial and freshwater macrofauna or macrophytes.     

Recent Surveys in the Forests of Ulu Segama Malua,Sabah, Malaysia,Show That Orang-utans (P. p. morio) Can Be Maintained in Slightly Logged Forests

Background

Today the majority of wild great ape populations are found outside of the network of protected areas in both Africa and Asia, therefore determining if these populations are able to survive in forests that are exploited for timber or other extractive uses and how this is managed, is paramount for their conservation.

Methodology/Principal Findings

In 2007, the “Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Project” (KOCP) conducted aerial and ground surveys of orang-utan (Pongo pygmaeus morio) nests in the commercial forest reserves of Ulu Segama Malua (USM) in eastern Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Compared with previous estimates obtained in 2002, our recent data clearly shows that orang-utan populations can be maintained in forests that have been lightly and sustainably logged. However, forests that are heavily logged or subjected to fast, successive coupes that follow conventional extraction methods, exhibit a decline in orang-utan numbers which will eventually result in localized extinction (the rapid extraction of more than 100 m³ ha⁻¹ of timber led to the crash of one of the surveyed sub-populations). Nest distribution in the forests of USM indicates that orang-utans leave areas undergoing active disturbance and take momentarily refuge in surrounding forests that are free of human activity, even if these forests are located above 500 m asl. Displaced individuals will then recolonize the old-logged areas after a period of time, depending on availability of food sources in the regenerating areas.

Conclusion/Significance

These results indicate that diligent planning prior to timber extraction and the implementation of reduced-impact logging practices can potentially be compatible with great ape conservation.     

Evaluating the use of Myotis daubentonii as an ecological indicator in Mediterranean riparian habitats

In recent years, interest and concern regarding biodiversity conservation have grown remarkably not only among conservationists but also amongst a wider public beyond scientific institutions. The monitoring of fauna and flora over long periods of time has been satisfactorily proven to be a viable tool for quantifying how environmental changes affect natural communities. Some bat species are regarded as good bioindicators, mainly due to their longevity and high sensitivity to environmental changes. Myotis daubentonii is one of the species most closely associated with riparian habitats in the north-east Iberian Peninsula, and is used as an ecological indicator in specific monitoring programs such as the Waterway Survey (United Kingdom) and the QuiroRius (Spain). Nonetheless, there is still great controversy as to whether M. daubentonii is a good biological indicator or not. While some authors accept it as a bioindicator, others point to the studies carried out in the U.K., Poland, Switzerland and Germany that show a remarkable increase in the numbers of this bat when pollution increases in canalized rivers, which suggest that it is in fact a generalist species.Due to the lack of information regarding habitat-quality requirements in Daubenton’s bats in the Mediterranean region and the species’ potential as a bioindicator in riparian habitats, we aimed to 1) examine how QuiroRius data match other well-established biological indicators (IBMWP for invertebrates and QBR for riparian forests); 2) analyse how environmental variables at both local and landscape scales affect the presence of M. daubentonii; and 3) describe how environmental traits influence the relative abundance of M. daubentonii.A total of 104 streams below 1000 m a.s.l. were simultaneously sampled using bat, macroinvertebrate and vegetation bioindicators. Despite having similar conservation aims, these three bioindicators did not provide consistent images of overall ecosystem quality and thus a multidisciplinary approach is necessary for a full analysis of the health of these riparian ecosystems. M. daubentonii were found more frequently in wide rivers with well-structured native riparian forests; on the other hand, landscape composition at broader scales and altitude had no influence on bat presence/abundance.Thus, we suggest that QuiroRius could be used as a complementary bioindicator for analysing riparian forest quality but cannot be used alone as a tool for evaluating correctly overall riparian ecosystem health. Both relative abundance and/or presence/absence could be used as bioindicator surrogates given that the effect of microhabitat environmental predictors had similar impact on both these measures.     

Drivers of natural spread of invasive <Emphasis Type="Italic">Impatiens parviflora</Emphasis> differ between life-cycle stages

Impatiens parviflora is one of the most widely spread invasive species in central Europe, yet the factors affecting its spread are still subject to discussion. The aim of this study was to determine which factors affect the spread of I. parviflora. This was achieved by observing the natural spread of the species on 15 permanent transects, in six different habitats, found within the Czech Republic from 2012 to 2016. The transects were divided into 321 plots, whilst data on environmental conditions, as well as of the spread of I. parviflora and its performance, were collected in each plot. The results showed that individual stages of the I. parviflora life-cycle were affected by individual environmental conditions to different extents. The most important factor preventing seedling emergence and establishment was a high cover of herb layer. It did not, however, affect survival of older plants. Thus, I. parviflora can grow in sites with dense cover of herb layer in case the cover formed after I. parviflora seedlings established. Juvenile mortality was the highest in sites with low nutrient levels and low soil moisture. Canopy openness had a negative effect on I. parviflora performance. Impatiens parviflora performed better in neutral soils, in comparison to acidic soils. Oak-hornbeam forests were the most suitable habitat for I. parviflora, followed by acidophilous oak and mixed coniferous forests. However, I. parviflora was able to penetrate into even species-rich habitats, such as thermophilous oak forests, as well as steppe grasslands on rocks. This makes it a potential threat to biodiversity. Only heathlands found on former pastures proved to be unsuitable for I. parviflora, as these remained uninvaded until the end of the study.     

Which species to conserve: evaluating children’s species-based conservation priorities

We currently have a meager understanding of the species attributes viewed as important for conservation by children, despite the fact that arguments for biodiversity conservation often hinge on the bequest value of species. We conducted a study of children between the ages of 4 and 14 (N = 183) on Andros Island, The Bahamas to determine how they prioritized wildlife species for conservation based on five attributes: endemism, use for hunting and fishing, rapid decline in population size, visibility around their home, and ecological significance. Children tended to rank ecological significance as the most important attribute for prioritizing wildlife for protection, followed closely by endemism, with other attributes being less important and not significantly different from one another. However, participants in a local environmental education program (N = 67) placed greater prioritization to species experiencing rapid population declines. We also found that boys prioritized use for hunting and fishing as more important for conservation than girls, older children placed greater importance on species with declining numbers and less importance on visibility of animals around their house, and children who had previously fished placed greater importance on endemism. These findings help elucidate how children value biodiversity, and suggest children’s conservation priorities may align relatively well with those of conservation biologists, especially after exposure to environmental education. We suggest that better understanding how children prioritize wildlife attributes for conservation can lead to more informed biodiversity conservation decisions and more effective policy implementation, as the perspectives of children can help bridge the gap between public opinion and scientific opinion.     

Modelling the distribution and compositional variation of plant communities at the continental scale

Aim

We investigate whether (1) environmental predictors allow to delineate the distribution of discrete community types at the continental scale and (2) how data completeness influences model generalization in relation to the compositional variation of the modelled entities.

Location

Europe.

Methods

We used comprehensive datasets of two community types of conservation concern in Europe: acidophilous beech forests and base‐rich fens. We computed community distribution models (CDMs) calibrated with environmental predictors to predict the occurrence of both community types, evaluating geographical transferability, interpolation and extrapolation under different scenarios of sampling bias. We used generalized dissimilarity modelling (GDM) to assess the role of geographical and environmental drivers in compositional variation within the predicted distributions.

Results

For the two community types, CDMs computed for the whole study area provided good performance when evaluated by random cross‐validation and external validation. Geographical transferability provided lower but relatively good performance, while model extrapolation performed poorly when compared with interpolation. Generalized dissimilarity modelling showed a predominant effect of geographical distance on compositional variation, complemented with the environmental predictors that also influenced habitat suitability.

Main conclusions

Correlative approaches typically used for modelling the distribution of individual species are also useful for delineating the potential area of occupancy of community types at the continental scale, when using consistent definitions of the modelled entity and high data completeness. The combination of CDMs with GDM further improves the understanding of diversity patterns of plant communities, providing spatially explicit information for mapping vegetation diversity and related habitat types at large scales.