ENM eval: An R package for conducting spatially independent evaluations and estimating optimal model complexity for Maxent ecological niche models

Summary Recent studies have demonstrated a need for increased rigour in building and evaluating ecological niche models ( ENM s) based on presence‐only occurrence data. Two major goals are to balance goodness‐of‐fit with model complexity (e.g. by ‘tuning’ model settings) and to evaluate models with spatially independent data. These issues are especially critical for data sets suffering from sampling bias, and for studies that require transferring models across space or time (e.g. responses to climate change or spread of invasive species). Efficient implementation of procedures to accomplish these goals, however, requires automation. We developed ENM eval , an R package that: (i) creates data sets for k ‐fold…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: 1119915, 1311367
• CU
  City University of New York
• VG
  Vedecká Grantová Agentúra MŠVVaŠ SR a SAV
• GC
  Graduate Center