Department of Biology and Biotechnologies, Global Mammal Assessment programme, Sapienza Università di Roma, Viale dell'Università 32, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Sep 27;366(1578):2623-32. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2011.0117.
Spatial data on species distributions are available in two main forms, point locations and distribution maps (polygon ranges and grids). The first are often temporally and spatially biased, and too discontinuous, to be useful (untransformed) in spatial analyses. A variety of modelling approaches are used to transform point locations into maps. We discuss the attributes that point location data and distribution maps must satisfy in order to be useful in conservation planning. We recommend that before point location data are used to produce and/or evaluate distribution models, the dataset should be assessed under a set of criteria, including sample size, age of data, environmental/geographical coverage, independence, accuracy, time relevance and (often forgotten) representation of areas of permanent and natural presence of the species. Distribution maps must satisfy additional attributes if used for conservation analyses and strategies, including minimizing commission and omission errors, credibility of the source/assessors and availability for public screening. We review currently available databases for mammals globally and show that they are highly variable in complying with these attributes. The heterogeneity and weakness of spatial data seriously constrain their utility to global and also sub-global scale conservation analyses.
物种分布的空间数据有两种主要形式，即点位置和分布地图（多边形范围和网格）。前者通常在时间和空间上存在偏差，且过于不连续，因此在空间分析中（未经转换）用处不大。有多种建模方法可用于将点位置转换为地图。我们讨论了点位置数据和分布地图在用于保护规划时必须满足的属性。我们建议，在使用点位置数据生成和/或评估分布模型之前，应根据一组标准评估数据集，包括样本量、数据年龄、环境/地理覆盖范围、独立性、准确性、时间相关性以及（经常被遗忘的）物种永久和自然存在区域的代表性。如果分布地图用于保护分析和策略，则必须满足其他属性，包括最小化委员会和遗漏错误、来源/评估者的可信度以及可供公众筛选。我们审查了全球哺乳动物的现有数据库，发现它们在符合这些属性方面存在很大差异。空间数据的异质性和弱点严重限制了它们在全球和次全球尺度保护分析中的效用。
