Selecting thresholds of occurrence in the prediction of species distributions

Transforming the results of species distribution modelling from probabilities of or suitabilities for species occurrence to presences/absences needs a specific threshold. Even though there are many approaches to determining thresholds, there is no comparative study. In this paper, twelve approaches were compared using two species in Europe and artificial neural networks, and the modelling results were assessed using four indices: sensitivity, specificity, overall prediction success and Cohen's kappa statistic. The results show that prevalence approach, average predicted probability/suitability approach, and three sensitivity‐specificity‐combined approaches, including sensitivity‐specificity sum maximization…

• MO
  Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries