Pluchea_salicifolia

plot of chunk range_map

Seasonal patterns

A standard Water and Leith climate diagram for the mean values of precipitation and temperature extracted from the species presence points.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-2

The Walter and Leith diagram assumes that the growing season occurs when rainfall is over 100mm. A more refined method is to extract the values from a bucket model that keeps track of input to the soil profile through precipitation and reductions in soil moisture through evaptranspiration over the course of the year. This can be compared to changes in NDVI at the collection points.

plot of chunk seasonal plot of chunk seasonal

Comparison

In some cases NDVI will remain fairly constant, even when the balance model shows that soil water constant is lowered for part of the year. Providing SWC is above 50% of maximum levels the vegetation would not experience a great deal of hydric stress.

plot of chunk compare

Summary of the variable values at the collection points.

Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
x -112.00 -104.00 -99.90 -101.00 -97.20 -88.20
y 16.30 18.70 19.50 20.70 21.40 29.50
X -112.00 -104.00 -99.90 -101.00 -97.20 -88.20
Y 16.30 18.70 19.50 20.70 21.30 29.40
elev 8.00 359.00 932.00 993.00 1520.00 2710.00
anprec 172.00 704.00 907.00 908.00 1100.00 2790.00
mtemp 13.30 19.80 22.20 21.90 24.50 28.40
Trange 13.60 19.20 22.60 22.50 24.60 36.90
saet 172.00 706.00 847.00 820.00 958.00 1420.00
msoil 208.00 248.00 262.00 267.00 281.00 466.00

Niche space with relation to annual precipitation and mean annual temperature.

The following diagrams show kernel densities one two synthestic climate axes (total annual rainfall and mean annual temperature). If their are signs of multimodality this may indicate that the species has not fully explored its climate niche, or that there are disjunct populations with differing characteristics. The method will not show clear results for species with few collection points.

plot of chunk kernel

Spatial clustering

The same analysis can be run to look at spatial clustering. The kernel densities are smoothed, so will only suggest multimodality if the points are very highly clustered.

plot of chunk spatial_kernel

Finding spatial clusters

The significance of any spatial clusters can be checked using the silhouette width method. The width is calculated for values of k between 2 and 5. If any are higher than 0.52 the analysis will produce a diagram showing the clusters.

plot of chunk spatial_clusters plot of chunk spatial_clusters

## [1] "The collections form  5 spatial clusters"

The collections form 5 spatial clusters

Anosim

If there is evidence that the points fall into at least 2 groups, but fewer than 6 we can look at whether there is significant differences in variability between and within groups in the climatic conditions at the sites using Anosim. This is a sensitive test, as would be MANOVA, so there will often be significant differences. They should only be intepreted as important if R is much larger than 0.3.

## 
## Call:
## anosim(dat = dis, grouping = fit$cluster, permutations = 100) 
## Dissimilarity: euclidean 
## 
## ANOSIM statistic R: 0.413 
##       Significance: 0.0099 
## 
## Based on  100  permutations
## 
## Upper quantiles of permutations (null model):
##    90%    95%  97.5%    99% 
## 0.0179 0.0206 0.0255 0.0288 
## 
## Dissimilarity ranks between and within classes:
##          0%   25%   50%   75%  100%     N
## Between 979 27500 47870 67876 86736 67513
## 1       103  4393 12914 31937 74012  4560
## 2       103  5330 15393 36672 84926  2211
## 3       103  8168 22134 42779 80682  1711
## 4       103  5178 24564 38832 79780  1830
## 5       103  9362 36539 63276 86637  8911

plot of chunk anosim

## Analysis of Variance Table
## 
## Response: vars$mtemp
##                         Df Sum Sq Mean Sq F value Pr(>F)
## as.factor(fit$cluster)   4     58   14.58    1.58   0.18
## Residuals              412   3794    9.21

The collections form 5 spatial clusters

Gam model using simple environmental variables

For comparison we can fit a model using mean temperature, temperature range and annual precipitation.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-5

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-6

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-7

Bucket model GAM.

Now fit a gam using temperature range, mean temperature and the annual soil moisture dynamic as input.

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-8

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-9

Random Forest

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-11

plot of chunk unnamed-chunk-12