Lab: Evaluating Uncertainty in Habitat Models

In this lab, you'll be using BlueSpray to estimate regularization parameters and create an uncertainty map.

Goals:

• Quantitatively define the regularization parameter for a habitat suitability model
• Create a map of uncertainty for your model

Running Maxent within BlueSpray

Reference the BlueSpray User's Guide to learn the basics of using BlueSpray. Then, load your occurrences and your predictor layers into BlueSpray. When you right click on the occurrence layer and drag to "Transforms", you'll see a transform for "Maxent". Run this transform and use it to run a series of model runs to determine the "best" regularization parameter to use for your model. Then, run it again to create a map of uncertainty for your model.

BlueSpray contains a Wizard for MaxEnt that is very similar to the one for HEMI 2. It contains the same features except for sensitivity testing as there is no method in MaxEnt to change the model coefficients and re-run the model.

Notes to Lab Instructors

Show the students how to use the basic functions of BlueSpray and how to run the MaxEnt transform and wizard.