Area of Habitat (AOH) maps aim to delineate the spatial distribution of
suitable habitat for a species (Brooks et al. 2019). They are used to help
understand the impacts of habitat loss on species, and prioritize areas for
conservation (e.g., Tracewski et al. 2016; Rondinini et al. 2005).
These maps are generally produced by obtaining geographic range data for a
species, and then removing areas that do not contain suitable habitat or
occur outside the known elevational limits for the species
(Brooks et al. 2019). To help make these maps accessible, the package
provides routines for automatically creating Area of Habitat data based on
the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. After manually downloading
species range data from the
IUCN Red List,
users can import them (using read_spp_range_data()), prepare them and
collate additional information for subsequent processing (using
create_spp_info_data()), and then create Area of Habitat data
(using create_spp_aoh_data()). Global elevation and habitat classification
data (Jung et al. 2020a,b; Lumbierres *et al. 2021; Robinson et al.
2014) are automatically downloaded, and data on species'
habitat preferences and elevational limits are obtained automatically using
the IUCN Red List API.
Since accessing the IUCN Red List API requires a token, users may need to
obtain a token
and update their R configuration to
recognize the token (see instructions below for details).
Accessing the IUCN Red List API
You will need to obtain a token for the
IUCN Red List API (if you do not have one
already). To achieve this, please visit the IUCN API website
(https://apiv3.iucnredlist.org/), click the "Generate a token" link at the
top of the web page, and fill out the form to apply for a token.
You should then receive a token shortly after completing
the form (but not immediately). After receiving a token, please open the
.Renviron file on your computer (e.g., using usethis::edit_r_environ()).
Next, please add the following text to the file (replacing the string with
the token) and save the file:
IUCN_REDLIST_KEY="your_actual_token_not_this_string"Please restart your R session. You should now be able to access the IUCN Red
List API. To verify this, please try running the following R code and –
assuming everything works correctly – you should see TRUE as the output:
# verify access to IUCN Red List API
is_iucn_rl_available()If these instructions did not work, please consult the documentation for the rredlist package for further details.
References
Brooks TM, Pimm SL, Akçakaya HR, Buchanan GM, Butchart SHM, Foden W, Hilton-Taylor C, Hoffmann M, Jenkins CN, Joppa L, Li BV, Menon V, Ocampo-Peñuela N, Rondinini C (2019) Measuring terrestrial Area of Habitat (AOH) and its utility for the IUCN Red List. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 34, 977–986. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2019.06.009
Jung M, Dahal PR, Butchart SHM, Donald PF, De Lamo X, Lesiv M, Kapos V, Rondinini C, and Visconti P (2020a) A global map of terrestrial habitat types. Scientific data, 7, 1–8. doi:10.1038/s41597-020-00599-8
Jung M, Dahal PR, Butchart SHM, Donald PF, De Lamo X, Lesiv M, Kapos V, Rondinini C, and Visconti P (2020b) A global map of terrestrial habitat types (insert version) [Data set]. Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.4058819
Lumbierres M, Dahal PR, Di Marco M, Butchart SHM, Donald PF, and Rondinini C (2021) Translating habitat class to land cover to map area of habitat of terrestrial vertebrates. Conservation Biology, 36, e13851. doi:10.1111/cobi.13851
Robinson N, Regetz J, and Guralnick RP (2014) EarthEnv-DEM90: A nearly- global, void-free, multi-scale smoothed, 90m digital elevation model from fused ASTER and SRTM data. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 87:57–67. doi:10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2013.11.002
Rondinini C, Stuart S, Boitani L (2005) Habitat suitability models and the shortfall in conservation planning for African vertebrates. Conservation Biology, 19, 1488–1497. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00204
Tracewski Ł, Butchart SHM, Di Marco M, Ficetola GF, Rondinini C, Symes A, Wheatley H, Beresford AE, Buchanan GM (2016) Toward quantification of the impact of 21st‐century deforestation on the extinction risk of terrestrial vertebrates. Conservation Biology, 30, 1070–1079. doi:10.1111/cobi.12715
Author
Maintainer: Jeffrey O Hanson jeffrey.hanson@uqconnect.edu.au (ORCID)