¿Por qué ignorar el relieve? Sobre el sesgo de reportar áreas planas en lugar de topográficas en estudios ecológicos y de modelación espacial

Denis Avila, D., Cruz Flores, D.D., Martinez-Borrego, D. 2020. ?Why are we ignoring the relief? On the bias of planimetric instead topographic areas in ecological and spatial modeling researches. Ecosistemas 29(3):1985. https://doi.org/10.7818/ECOS.1985 Spatial information, satellite products and their derivatives are important sources of environmental information. However, the accuracy of area and distance measurements is sacrificed by using planimetric projections and consciously ignoring relief irregularities, essential in ecological studies where the important estimate area is those perceived by organisms and the real surface of which resources density depend. In this paper, we assess differences in estimation of geographic areas accounting for or ignoring terrain topology, in ecological studies applications or distribution modeling, in Cuban archipelago. By using parcels and virtual species simulated distributions we assess the bias size in those estimations over a topological area derived from a digital elevation model, with 26.8m of spatial resolution. Underestimation bias can reach in Cuba up to 1598 m2 of differences, equivalent to 45% of error. Errors are higher in mountain regions. We probe that equally planimetric size parcels can reach differences up to 15%, depending on location and included proportions of relief types. Changes in potential distribution area estimates for virtual species present errors over 700 km2. If using relativized values, the error diminishes. More studies are in need on the methodological impact of this bias, mostly for its implications for ecological conclusions or on its potential influence in management decisions.