Canadian Forest Service links

About the study

The Canadian Forest Service - Sault Ste. Marie, along with the Ontario Natural Heritage Information Centre and the University of Guelph, took on this study to better understand the spatial distribution and habitat requirements of amphibians and reptiles that inhabit Ontario's forests. The ultimate goals are to help assess trade-offs between conserving components of biodiversity and other forest values and reduce costs in biodiversity monitoring. Amphibians and reptiles are an important, but often neglected, component of the planet's biodiversity. Research is indicating that amphibian populations are declining on a global scale. As a component of this study, a Herpetofauna Reference was compiled which contains descriptions of Ontario's amphibians and reptiles, their habitats and conservation status. Results are also presented which predict the bioclimatic domain of each species at a 1km resolution across the entire province. These results reveal areas that are potentially climatically suitable for each species.

How the potential climatic domain maps were generated

This type of spatial prediction makes use of the BIOCLIM/BIOMAP suite of computer software developed by Nix (1986) and colleagues at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University. Our application makes use of an Ontario climate model (Mackey et al. 1996), an Ontario digital elevation model or DEM (Mackey, 1994) and observations of numerous species. The climate model enables estimates of long term mean monthly temperature and precipitation to be generated at any location in the province. Hence, estimates of climate can be generated for all locations where a species has been located. From these analyses, bioclimatic profiles are produced which describe the climatic conditions sampled by the locations where the species has been observed. The number of observations used in the analysis was pared down because some regions (close to urban centres and naturalist clubs) were heavily sampled. A subset was selected on the criterion that observations must be at least 3 km apart. The climate variables include mean annual temperature, maximum temperature of the hottest month, and annual precipitation, to name a few. These profiles are compared to a geographic climate database for the province which was also generated using the Ontario climate model and the DEM. These data are stored in a GIS (Geographic Information System). In this way, landscapes that are climatically suitable for the species can be identified (see the Potential Climatic Domain Maps). For some species a Potential Climatic Domain Map could not be generated because of the small number of observations (ie. Dusky Salamander). Whether the species actually occurs in the regions indicated by the Potential Climatic Domain Map will depend on other factors such as the type of forest or wetland in the area. Further details of these methods are in "Bioclimatic and spatial analyses of Ontario reptiles and amphibians" (McKenney et al., 1998).