Summarising species distribution data for InVEST guild table

Science, Research & Data
1

Dear community
My relative abundance data for the InVEST pollination guild table are based on species distribution data (SDM, 0-1). SDM data are available on a regular 25 m grid. Until now the relative abundance values were the 12 average values of all the grid points within 12 subregions. Per subregion I have approx 6’673’757 grid points. By running the InVEST 12 times and then post-processing the results I am able to consider within country variability of relative species abundance.

My question: the pollinator abundance index is quite low (<0.2). Because many of hte grid points have a zero-value, average value of relative species abundance (0.05-0.15) are much lower than maximal values (0.3-0.6). I am thinking about using the 12 maximal values of all the grid points within the 12 subregions. Because InVEST models the “potential supply and abundance” the maximal value may be the better proxy than the average value? Working with higher values would also improve the validation/verification.

Kind regards
Sibylle

@swolny
@jesseG

2

Dear community
I calculated now the InVEST output “pollinator abundance index” for both, using guild relative abundance 1. average and 2. max per subregion. Quite interesting, the index hardly changes. This finding is based on the fact that average and max per subregion is highly correlated and as discussed earlier in this forum, InVEST transforms all guild table absolute abundance values to relative abundance 0-1 values before processing the model calculations.
kind regards
Sibylle