excellent for teaching as well as reference

Home ยป Mapping Species Distributions

E.E. van Loon @ 2010-06-11

Mapping Species Distributions

$48.00
We adopted Janet Franklin's book in a specialized graduate course for ecology students at the University of Amsterdam, and it turned out to be very well suited for our purposes.

The book covers all relevant aspects of species distribution modeling (SDM) in a balanced and accessible way for ecologists that want to understand or apply SDM. In my view the right choices were made in covering the all different aspects of SDM (species data, environmental data, methods, methodological background, case studies) while reaching sufficient depth at the critical points.
The book does not contain exercises, so when using it as study material, it should be complemented by exercises and examples (both data sets and computer-code implementing models). But in fact, I consider it a (wise) choice rather than an omission not to include that kind of material in the book. The appropriate type of exercises and model-implementations depend a lot on the specific interests of a target group as well as the modeling and/or computer skills. So one would for that purpose rather design tailored material, complementing the book.

The book provides a very complete bibliography (and 'model-ography') on species distribution modeling until 2010. The discussion of this literature (including it's structuring in several tables) is thoughtful and well done.

My only criticism on the book is not about content but about layout: a) some illustrations could have been made much better (e.g. those picturing regression trees, figs. 7.1 & 7.2) or more information-rich (e.g. the explanation of an ensemble model, fig. 7.5); b) an author-index would have been nice (since the book gives a very good introduction to - and overview of the SDM-literature).