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### **Component: Obtain Environmental Data**

**ORIENTATION**

In addition to occurrence data, algorithms for niche/distributional modeling require environmental predictor variables (Franklin 2010 chap. 5, Peterson et al. 2011 chap. 6). **Component: Obtain Environmental Data** allows users to obtain these variables from online sources in the form of raster grids. In recent years, a number of global databases of climatic data have emerged (Hijmans et al. 2005, Kriticos et al. 2012, Sbrocco and Barber 2013, Karger et al. 2016). Currently, Wallace provides three options for environmental data. First, it offers access to present-day averaged climatic data from the WorldClim dataset, which has near-global coverage of terrestrial areas (Module: *WorldClim Bioclims*). 
Second, users may access present and past (paleo) climatic data from ecoClimate (Module: *ecoClimate*). Third, users may alternatively upload environmental raster grids (Module: *User-Specified*).  

We envision that future releases will offer other terrestrial climate datasets (with different interpolation methodologies, e.g. CHELSA; or with different variables, e.g. CliMond); marine climate datasets (e.g. MARSPEC); and vegetation/land cover/land-use data. In the meantime, such datasets can be used in Wallace via the *User-Specified* option, but users should be careful to use environmental data relevant for the time frame of the occurrences (e.g., not using recent land cover along with older occurrence data).


**REFERENCES**

Franklin, J. (2010). Mapping Species Distributions: Spatial Inference and Prediction. Data for species distribution models: the environmental data. In: *Mapping species distributions: spatial inference and prediction*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511810602" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511810602</a>

Hijmans, R.J., Cameron, S.E., Parra, J.L., Jones, P.G., & Jarvis, A. (2005). Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. *International Journal of Climatology*, 25(15),  1965-1978. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.1276" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.1276</a> 

Karger, D.N., Conrad, O., Böhner, J., Kawohl, T., Kreft, H., Soria-Auza, R.W., Zimmermann, N.E, Linder, H.P., & Kessler, M. (2016). Climatologies at high resolution for the earth's land surface areas (Version 1.1). World Data Center for Climate. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1594/WDCC/CHELSA_v1_1" target="_blank">http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1594/WDCC/CHELSA_v1_1</a>

Kriticos, D.J., Webber, B.L., Leriche, A., Ota, N., Macadam, I., Bathols, J., & Scott, J.K. (2012). CliMond: global high-resolution historical and future scenario climate surfaces for bioclimatic modelling. *Methods in Ecology and Evolution*, 3(1), 53-64. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-210X.2011.00134.x" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-210X.2011.00134.x</a> 

Peterson, A.T., Soberón, J., Pearson, R.G., Anderson, R.P., Martinez-Meyer, E., Nakamura, M., & Araújo, M.B. (2011). Environmental Data. In: *Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions*. Princeton, New Jersey: *Monographs in Population Biology*, 49. Princeton University Press. <a href="https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691136868.003.0006" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691136868.003.0006</a> 

Sbrocco, E.J., Barber, P.H. (2013). MARSPEC: ocean climate layers for marine spatial ecology. *Ecology*, 94(4), 979-979. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1890/12-1358.1" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1890/12-1358.1</a>
