The projection of species distribution in the future using SDM is influenced by the General Circulation Model (GCM) chosen to make future environmental variables used in the SDM. For example, WorldClim provides a series of bioclimatic variables for a series of GCMs. Which of these GCMs would be the best representation of the future climate in the Caribbean?
For plants, although little used, is the model of the neo-tropical evolutionary centers of Gentry 1982. The author recognizes four centers in South America, plus a center in North America that identifies with the name of Laurasia. The centers in South America are: Amazonia, Guyana and North of Colombia for the jungles. To those you can incorporate the territory that Morrone identifies as a sub-province of Chaco. These centers correspond to the most important biomes. For us, it was most comfortable to compare all the endemic flora of Cuba with total local floras. For that, the main components served us, which is a parametric method. The comparison was made with the families weighted with the number of infra generic units. Since the variables are all of the same nature, the normalization of the data is not necessary. This led us to two main centers in the origin of floras, and with that we defined a bioclimatic pattern that was incorporated into the Raven biomes model. This made it possible to determine the regions of the world from which the most dangerous invasive species could be emitted. In a subsequent analysis of invasive species in Cuba, they all fit that model
Hi Yusdiel,
I do not know much about SDM but I would say that the results provided by GCM are too coarse for analysing SDM in the Caribbean (typically GCM provide climatic variables with a resolution of 300 km), I would suggest a higher resolution using either Regional Climate Models (RCM) or reanalysis. I have generated maps of wind speed for South America at a resolution of 50x50 km using reanalysis provided by the ECMWF (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/research/climate-reanalysis).
From the ECMWF webpage you can download climatic variables relevant to studies of SD (such as temperature, wind speed, humidity, precipitation, etc.) at much higher resolution.
See: Article Maps of wind hazard over South Eastern South America conside...
Happy to help if you need more information.
Saludos,
Augusto
Dear Yusdiel,
Generally, it's much better to use different GCMs instead of only one, for any kind of climate change studies. Each GCM has its own initial conditions, structure, and uncertainty as well. So, decision making based on only one GCM cannot be very reliable, especially for ecological studies which are very complex and have various parameters.
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