Integrated SDM database: Enhancing the relevance and utility of species distribution models in conservation management

1. Species’ ranges are changing at accelerating rates. Species distribution models (SDMs) are powerful tools that help rangers and decision-makers prepare for reintroductions, range shifts, reductions, and/or expansions by predicting habitat suitability across landscapes. Yet, range-expanding or -shifting species in particular face other challenges that traditional SDM procedures cannot quantify, due to large differences between a species’ currently-occupied range and potential future range. The realism of SDMs is thus lost and not as useful for conservation management in practice. Here, we address these challenges with an extended assessment of habitat suitability through an integrated SDM database (iSDMdb).

2. The iSDMdb is a spatial database of predicted sites in a species’ prediction range, derived from SDM results, and is a single spatial feature that contains additional, user-friendly data fields that synthesise and summarise SDM predictions and uncertainty, human impacts, rest...