Novel Approaches to Modeling and Mapping Terrestrial Vertebrate Occurrence in the Northwest and Alaska: An Evaluation

Abstract Predicting species occurrence is central to ecology and numerous modeling approaches have been applied, including deductive and inductive. We conducted two modeling projects, one in Northwest U.S. and the other in Alaska, to evaluate the potential of improving species distribution models by combining deductive and inductive modeling approaches for over 1,000 taxa. Our objectives were to map each species' range, produce an inductive distribution model based on species occurrence records using Maxent and a deductive distribution model using expert knowledge of species-habitat associations, combine their output, and compare their relative strengths and limitations. While the two projects were independent, but related, in general, our methods included compiling species occurrence records, environmental variables, habitat associations, and assessing model accuracy. We had 342 deductive and 213 combined models in Northwest U.S. and 222 deductive, 74 inductive, and 37 combined models in Alaska selected ...