Integrating animal tracking datasets at a continental scale for mapping Eurasian lynx habitat

Aim:   The increasing availability of animal tracking datasets
collected across many sites provides new opportunities to move beyond
local assessments to enable detailed and consistent habitat mapping at
biogeographic scales. However, integrating wildlife datasets across large
areas and study sites is challenging, as species’ varying responses to
different environmental contexts must be reconciled. Here, we compare
approaches for large-area habitat mapping and assess available habitat for
a recolonizing large carnivore, the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx).  
Location: Europe   Methods:   We use a continental-scale
animal tracking database (450 individuals from 14 study sites) to
systematically assess modeling approaches, comparing (1) global strategies
that pool all data for training vs. building local, site-specific models
and combining them, (2) different approaches for incorporating regional
variation in habitat selection, and (3) different modeling algorithms,
testing nonlinear mixed effects models as well as machine-learning
algorithms.   Results:   Both global and local modeling
strategies allowed building transferable habitat models with overall
similar predictive performance. Model performance was the highest using
flexible machine-learning algorithms and when incorporating variation in
habitat selection as a function of environmental variation. Our
best-performing model used a weighted combination of local, site-specific
habitat models. Our habitat maps identified large areas of suitable, but
currently unoccupied lynx habitat, with many of the most suitable
unoccupied areas located in regions that could foster connectivity between
currently isolated populations.   Main conclusions:   We
demonstrate that global and local modeling strategies can achieve robust
habitat models at the continental scale and that considering regional
variation in habitat selection improves broad-scale habitat mapping. More
generally, we highlight the promise of large wildlife tracking databases
for large-area habitat mapping. Our maps provide the first
high-resolution, yet continental assessment of lynx habitat across Europe,
providing a consistent basis for conservation planning for restoring the
species within its former range.