Re: [AfricanBirding] BirdLife Africa Climate Exchange

From: tzbirdatlas <tzbirdatlas@yahoo.co.uk>

Date: 2010-06-23 20:08

Subject: Re: [AfricanBirding] BirdLife Africa Climate Exchange - more information

I would suggest that the Tanzania dataset used by the Copenhagen team is at least 9 years old (could be 10 or even 11, can't remember the exact date) very far from being ......

"the most up to date data from the Tanzania Bird Atlas" I guess u qualify this by saying "at the time" without mentioning that this was a decade ago.

and never were we asked to validate any species maps but no doubt we are acknowledged along the line.

Quite agree about the "uncertain future" in terms of climate change but would suggest you take heed of Colin Beale's approach to the stats and the comments from Peter Usher who has far more experience in these climatic matters than most.

I might also suggest that current human demographics point to a more certain future in which wild Africa has no place at all. But, as England actually won tonight, I won't get too morose about the future.

----- Original Message -----

From: Ken Mwathe

Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:33 PM

Subject: [AfricanBirding] BirdLife Africa Climate Exchange - more information

Dear Colleagues,

BirdLife International and its collaborator Durham University would like to appreciate the interest and debate that the Africa Climate Exchange ( http://www.africa-climate- exchange. org/) has generated and in particular the species distribution maps. This is precisely the reason this resource was developed to become a forum of exchange and refinement of ideas regarding the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems.

Now to the concerns raised on the accuracy of the maps and the underlying data being seriously flawed.

We wish to point out that maps for the present show the modeled distribution of species based on the relationships between distribution data and climatic variables. They therefore represent "areas of potential climatic suitability" for a species rather than an explicit representation of each species realized distribution. Some fit the known distributions better than others. The dataset used for these models has been compiled by colleagues in Copenhagen University and are based on a variety of data sources, including the most up to date data from the Tanzania Bird Atlas and other sources at the time (see http://macroecology.ku.dk/resources/data_resources/african_vertebrates/ for a detailed description). This has now also been clarified on the webpage text accompanying the maps.

Over the past two decades, the modeling methods used in the generation of these maps have been the

Project Manager, Lake Natron Advocacy and Africa Climate Change Project

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