Assessing transferability of ecological models: an underappreciated aspect of statistical validation

Summary 1. Ecologists have long sought to distinguish relationships that are general from those that are idiosyncratic to a narrow range of conditions. Conventional methods of model validation and selection assess in‐ or out‐of‐sample prediction accuracy but do not assess model generality or transferability, which can lead to overestimates of performance when predicting in other locations, time periods or data sets. 2. We propose an intuitive method for evaluating transferability based on techniques currently in use in the area of species distribution modelling. The method involves cross‐validation in which data are assigned non‐randomly to groups that are spatially, temporally or otherwise distinct, thus…

• UE
  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

  Award: 833834
• UG
  U.S. Geological Survey

  Award: G09AC00050
• UF
  U.S. Forest Service
• RM
  Rocky Mountain Research Station