Maximum Entropy Modelling (MAXENT)

Brief Description

Uses the external MAXENT modelling tool (Phillips et al. 2006) to predict a species distribution using presence-only data for a given extent. This software takes as input a set of layers or environmental variables (such as elevation, precipitation, etc.), as well as a set of georeferenced occurrence locations, and produces a model of the range of the given species.

• Saves the point localities layer to a new file called species.csv containing only the name and locality of the species. Reprojects the point layer to Lat/Lon (WGS-84) if necessary.
• Unifies all input environmental layers to a common extent and cellsize. For now this is done using a script introduced by Yuri Ryabov.
• Exports all unified layers as ESRI Ascii files to the temporary folder.

Parameters

• [param] Input Vector Layer: Point localities of species occurences

• [param] Input Vector Field: Species name inside the vector layer

• [param] Input Raster Layers: Any number environmental layers

• [optional param] MAXENT Parameters: An optional file containing additional MAXENT parameters. Parameters matter! So please familiarize yourself with them.

• Output Results: The generated prediction + MAXENT results are automatically loaded into QGIS after execution. A high value of the function at a particular grid cell indicates that the grid cell is predicted to have suitable conditions for that species. The computed model is a probability distribution over all the grid cells

Notes

• Results are saved in the work folder , which can be set in the Processing Options
• Intermediate file conversions are saved in the temp folder , which can be set in the Processing Options