Abstract:
A program that would predict the likely distribution of a species over a geographic
area have always been a sought for tool in the fi eld of ecology due to the wide
variety of applications that it could have or as it is more commonly known, Niche
Modelling. The species of interest, Dipterocarps, are medium to large, resinous
forest trees belonging to tropical plant family dipterocarpaceae. Being one of
the main source of timber in Asia, a suitability tool for dipterocarps would have
some economic impact for the Philippines' export industry. For modelling its
distribution, maximum entropy approach is used. Environmental variables used
were obtained from PAG ASA but since localities are from central visayas mainly
only, only the weather stations surrounding the localities are selected.The model
produced has an AUC score 99.64% however, it is important we note that the
presence data and climate data are based mainly from Central Visayas. For future
research purposes, the software produced also includes a function to produce your
own model using your own set of environmental variables. The software is using
java as its interface and R (with Dismo as the main package) for its backend.
