1. Species, species list or lifeform
2. Identity of area 1
3. Identity of area 2

and the outputs are

1. A pop-up window that reports
   1. the size, number of occurrences and number of species for each area
   2. Number of species only in area 1 (not area 2)
   3. Number of species only in area 2 (not area 1)
   4. Number of species in both areas

      

2. A CSV file that contains all the above and a list of species showing and if they occur in area 1 and area 2

This option will take any mapped point layer in the Spatial Portal and export it to the Biodiversity and Climate Change Virtual Laboratory site (BCCVL). You would use this option only after cleaning/filtering your data to ensure that all records are fit for purpose for the analyses planned within bccvl. For example, you would want to remove duplicate records, records with poor spatial and temporal resolution or possibly records that have user assertions (user annotations) for say an SDM.

The primary way of cleaning records is to use the legend of the point layer, and select that facet (indexed variable) from the dropdown box to the right of “User defined colour”. You may want to examine some of the original Darwin Core terms such as “collectedBy” or “year”. You will certainly want to examine all of the “Record issues” and other facets in the class “Assertions”. The ALA andBCCVL run joint workshops on the issues around filtering data in the ALA’s Spatial Portal and analysing it in the BCCVL. To learn more, email suport@ala.org.au.

After clicking on “Export to bccvl”, you will get a window that will ask you to either login in to BCCVL or to create a new account.

After you login, you will then be asked to authorize the ALA to access your BCCVL account so that the point layer can be exported there…You can authorize or deny. If you deny, then the only way to get filtered ALA data to the BCCVL is to export it from the Spatial Portal as a CSV file and then import it after login into BCCVL. “Authorize” makes the process simple.

After you authorize access of the Spatial Portal to BCCVL, the Spatial Portal will display a window detailing all of the mapped point layers.

The layer to export to BCCVL will usually be the last (top) point layer as the older versions will usually represent partially filtered versions of that final layer.

Select the point layer or layers that you want to export to BCCVL for analyses and press the “Next” button as shown below.

If the process goes to plan, you should see a new window that shows that the export has been successful. This window contains a link to BCCVL. If you click on it, you will be taken directly to your data pages in BCCVL and the layer name should be first on the list.

The scatterplot (environmental space) and the map (geographic space) are linked. Dragging a rectangle over an area of the scatterplot to enclose occurrence points will highlight the corresponding points on the map. You can also define an active area on the map and have all occurrences within that area highlighted on the scatterplot.

The scatterplot allows you to:

• Examine the environmental niche of one or two taxa or taxonomic groups. Using a species as the primary taxa and its genus as the secondary taxa can be highly informative. For example, survey effort for the species may be able to be evaluated. Two similar species can be plotted to see how they may be partitioning the environment.
• Identify where species do not seem to occur. Areas in the scatterplot that do not contain occurrences are just as interesting as areas that do. Species may not occur in an area of the scatterplot for at least four reasons:
  1. The species may not be able to survive in that environment.
  2. The species may occur in that environment but there has been no surveys to look for it.
  3. The environment may have been surveyed but the species was not found, even though it was there.
  4. The species may be in that environment, but misidentified.(the scatterplot functionality has been designed to help discern what reason seems the most likely)
• Identify where a species tolerates a wide range of environmental conditions.
• Identify sub-populations that may adapt best to various climate change scenarios.
• Identify what environmental combinations exist within an area.

From the menu option, select ‘Tools’ and then ‘Scatterplot’.

Options

The scatterplot requires a minimum of three parameters – a species or taxonomic group and two environmental variables.

• A primary species or any taxonomic group. The occurrences of this group are the points on the scatterplot (e.g. Eucalyptus camaldulensis).
• Optionally, a second species or taxonomic group can be selected as a background (e.g. the genus Eucalyptus).
• Two environmental layers (e.g. Temperature – annual mean (Bio01) and Precipitation – annual (Bio12)).

Faceting on legends

Any legend permits modification of the display of the associated layer. In the scatterplot tool, this means that both the points (occurrences) in both the map (geographic) and environmental (scatterplot) space. To activate the legend in the scatterplot, click on the ‘Species display setting’ button. This will create a floating legend that will permit rendering the points in both spaces on the basis of selected legend properties. For example, in the image at the top of the page, under the facet dropdown box on the legend, “Institution” was selected and the Apply button pressed. After a little while (for many points) the points on the scatterplot and the map will be coloured according to the institution facet.

For more detailed information on Scatterplot faceting »

Additional Options

• Highlight active area occurrences. Selecting this option will highlight those occurrences on the scatterplot occurring within the map’s defined active area.
• Display possible environments in area produces a grey-scale background on the scatterplot that delineates the combination of environments that occur within the full range of possible environmental values. Environmental combinations outside the environmental envelope do not occur in nature and are shown in light blue. The grey-scale represents the geographic (map) area of the environmental combinations. Light colours imply a greater area of the environmental combination than darker colours, thus providing an indication of the spatial extents of the environments.
• The Select records with missing values check box will highlight those occurrences on the map that have one or more missing environmental values. In most cases, missing values will occur when occurrences are off the extent of the environmental surface, e.g. terrestrial occurrences occurring in marine or limnetic environments or vice versa. The number of occurrences with missing environmental values is also listed.
• Selecting occurrence points on the scatterplot. A rectangle area can be created on the scatterplot by dragging the mouse between any two points. When the left mouse button is released:
  • the area perimeter will be displayed on the scatterplot with a black border.
  • primary taxa in this area will be highlighted on the map.
  • the number of records selected will be listed.
  • the range of both environmental variables for the rectangle area will be listed.
  • the add in/out layers to the map button creates two new layers to the layers list: an IN-group that includes all the occurrences within the environmental rectangle and an OUT-group that contains all occurrences not within the environmental rectangle. The legend and look of the IN/OUT layers can be altered the same way as for other species layers. See the Layer Interaction Panel for a screenshot of the species legend.
• The Download databutton creates a CSV (comma-separated values) file of the data used to create the scatterplot. The variables are the:
  • Occurrence record identifier.
  • Status of the scientific name occurrence: ‘Uploaded’ or ‘In Active Area’ (for those records highlighted in the active area of the scatterplot, there will be both an uploaded and an in active area record).
  • X – environmental variable value.
  • Y – environmental variable value.
• The Download image button will create a png image file of the scatterplot as displayed when the button is pressed. This file can be viewed or downloaded.

A case study

A case study on using the scatterplot tool to investigate the distribution of Banksia integrifolia in Australia, is given by Dr Ben Raymond of the Australian Antarctic Division, Hobart.

Read the Case Study »

A worked example

• Eucalyptus camaldulensis as the Primary species.
• Eucalyptus (genus) as the background taxonomic group.
• Temperature – annual mean (Bio01).
• Precipitation – annual (Bio12).

For Step 4, we are now using the general window for any type of environmental/contextual layer selection. If you tick the box next to “Display possible environments“, the scatterplot will be shaded (from dark meaning a small area of that environmental combination – to light meaning a large area of that environmental combination) to display what environmental combinations are possible – and not all are, thankfully.

In the context of the scatterplot, it is likely that you will want to use the ‘Add from search‘ box and either enter part of the name of the layer or its short name (e.g., Bio01 for “Temperature – annual mean”) and then check the box on the left of the name to select it. Ditto with the second layer. At the bottom of the window, you will see the number of layers selected and this should equal 2 before clicking on the next key (bottom right).

An alternative is to import the names of the two layers from a file – and this can be done from the top dropdown box. The names of the two selected layers can of course also be exported using the ‘Export set’ button at the bottom of the table. You can then re-import the list using the import option from the top dropdown box.

Once you have entered the name of the primary taxa (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), the (primary) occurrences are mapped.

The background taxa group is the genus Eucalyptus. This gives us a good indication of what environments the genus covers and what portion of that environment is covered by E. camaldulensis. These occurrences are only mapped on the scatterplot in orange in the background. The E. camaldulensis is shown by blue points. If the highlight records in the active area was selected, then those records would be ringed with a red circle.

In the worked example, we will use temperature (Temperature – annual mean (Bio01)) and precipitation (Precipitation – annual (Bio12)) as the two environmental variables to define the environment. Once these two variables have been added, the scatterplot is generated. As there is a large number of occurrences (Eucalyptus has over 240,000 records), processing can take up to a minute or so. The distribution of Eucalyptus (orange dots) covers a significant portion of the scatterplot, thereby indicating that the genus can handle a wide range of temperature and rainfall conditions. The majority of the distribution is below 2,500mm rainfall, with two higher rainfall extensions at low and high temperature. To learn more about the environment used by the genus, make it the primary taxa.

Eucalyptus camaldulensis is located toward the bottom of the scatterplot distribution and clearly follows the outline of the genus ‘envelope’ on the low precipitation end, but over a broad range of temperature. This suggests that E. camaldulensis is stereotypic of low rainfall adapted eucalyptus. However, it covers mean annual temperatures from 12°C to nearly 30°C – a very impressive range!

Let’s look at some of the outliers to see where they occur. First, the low temperature end. Drag a rectangle over the lower end occurrences on the scatterplot. This highlights the corresponding points on the map, near Cressy in Tasmania and Macedon in Victoria. The former is low altitude, but further south than the higher altitude Macedon.

Let’s do the same at the high temperature end to see where these occurrences are located. Drag the rectangle on the scatterplot and then examine the highlighted occurrences on the map. Not unexpectedly – the high temperature occurrences are found in the extreme north of Australia.

Note that the range of temperature and rainfall values of the rectangle are listed above the scatterplot. In this case, a mean annual temperature range of 25.6130°C to 28.0974°C and rainfall between 285.996mm and 485.908mm. Also note that there are 20 records selected

The selected occurrences could be used to create two new mapped layers – an ‘IN-group’ containing only those 20 occurrences and an ‘OUT-group’ containing all the rest. This option can be useful for filtering/separating out a subset of occurrences for further analysis in say the spatial prediction model. Also note that there are 73 occurrences that have one or two missing environmental values of temperature or rainfall. If an IN/OUT groups are created these occurrences are added to the OUT-group by default. If you click the checkbox saying ‘Select records with missing values’, then the corresponding occurrences will be highlighted on the map and added to the IN-group. In all cases, these occurrences are located off the terrestrial temperature and rainfall surfaces; they occur in the ocean. This may be due to the resolution of the surfaces or of the coastline or just inaccurate occurrence locations.

Next, let’s consider why E. camaldulensis doesn’t occur in a few environments on the scatterplot.

There is a hole in the distribution of E. camaldulensis at around 25°C and 600mm that is filled by other eucalypt species (shown by the orange Eucalyptus background points) so that environment exists in nature. But why are there no occurrences here? There are at least four possibilities:

1. E. camaldulensis may not be able to survive in that environment. This is possible here but unlikely.
2. E. camaldulensis may occur in that environment but there had been no surveys in the area represented by that environment. This is a likely scenario and best addressed by a targeted survey.
   NOTE: You can use the Environmental Envelope option for defining an Active Area (see Active Area Help) to map the locations that conform to this environmental combination.
3. The environment may have been surveyed but the species was not seen, even though it was there. Another possible scenario but E. camaldulensis is a huge tree, so one would hope that this was an unlikely, but you never know!
4. E. camaldulensis may have been seen in that environment, but misidentified. Not an uncommon taxonomic problem! The Atlas is incorporating identification keys using Identify Life (http://www.identifylife.org/). You could examine what eucalypts occur in the area represented by this hole by using the Map All option on the Environmental Envelope noted in (2. above) and see if their characters could be confused with E. camaldulensis.

The same situation doesn’t occur with the ‘dent’ in the environment at around 14°C and 2500mm. Obviously that environment doesn’t exist in Australia (at least not represented by the environmental layers we have chosen) – and it is therefore not surprising that no eucalypts are to be found. The eucalyptus background covers much of the potential environmental range indicating the ubiquity of the genus. The grey-scale of the ‘display possible environments in area’ indicate the size of the corresponding mapped areas, with black representing only a small area with this environment in Australia, and reversely white, a large area. For example, there are only small areas of Australia with extreme rainfall (around Tully in Northern Queensland), and a large area of very low rainfall. This can be examined further by examining the environmental layers: Temperature – annual mean (Bio01) and Precipitation – annual (Bio12).

Mean annual temperature and annual rainfall were chosen because these variables were very likely to constrain the spatial distribution of eucalyptus. You may wish to use the Prediction Tool (MaxEnt) to find out which environmental variables best seem to control the distribution of Eucalyptus camaldulensis.

Demonstration Youtube Video

By Lee Belbin, Geospatial Team Leader

This option is presented as a quick way of comparing the environments of a few points. The alternative is to use Export | Point sample where environmental data is appended to an existing set of points, which are usually species occurrences, but can also be any set of points that have been imported. Point comparisons simply use mouse clicks on the map of a few points and the result is a display of those points (forming columns in the legend area) across all layers (rows in the legend area).

First, zoom and pan to the area of interest and then click on Add point. You can then edit the point or remove it from the list. Once you have defined your points, then simply click on Compare and the list of layer values will be displayed for each point. Given the limited area of the legend, only 9 or so points can be displayed. Once displayed however, the CSV file can be downloaded for analysis.

A portion of the downloaded CSV file has been sorted for the difference between the first two sites just to demonstrate the type of analysis that can be done.

AOO and EOO

Area of Occupancy (AOO) and Extent of Occurrence (EOO) are two ‘statistics’ used by the IUCN for their Red List of Threatened Species (http://www.iucnredlist.org/). Their Red List of Categories and Criteria (IUCN 2012) defines these terms as follows-

“Area of occupancy [AOO] is defined as the area within its ‘extent of occurrence’ which is occupied by a taxon, excluding cases of vagrancy. The measure reflects the fact that a taxon will not usually occur throughout the area of its extent of occurrence, which may contain unsuitable or unoccupied habitats. In some cases (e.g. irreplaceable colonial nesting sites, crucial feeding sites for migratory taxa) the area of occupancy is the smallest area essential at any stage to the survival of existing populations of a taxon. The size of the area of occupancy will be a function of the scale at which it is measured…” See Figure 2 IUCN 2012 below. The IUCN recommendation for the grid size used to calculate AOO is 2km but is user-defineable  This grid is placed over all selected taxon records within the user-defined area.

Extent of occurrence [EOO] is defined as the area contained within the shortest continuous imaginary boundary which can be drawn to encompass all the known, inferred or projected sites of present occurrence of a taxon, excluding cases of vagrancy (see below Figure 2 IUCN 2012). This measure may exclude discontinuities or disjunctions within the overall distributions of taxa (e.g. large areas of obviously unsuitable habitat)… Extent of occurrence can often be measured by a minimum convex polygon (the smallest polygon in which no internal angle exceeds 180 degrees and which contains all the sites of occurrence).  In the Spatial Portal, EOO is calculated as the minimum convex hull based on the “presence” taxon occurrence records within the user-defined area.

AOO and EOO would normally be calculated on taxa that have some ‘conservation sensitivity’. The ALA uses the term “Threatened” for any level or class of conservation status via the States, Territories, Federal Government or IUCN. Any species that is deemed ‘sensitive’ in having some State/Territory or Federal conservation status will be processed through the Sensitive Data Service (SDS: http://www.ala.org.au/faq/data-sensitivity/).  The Sensitive Data Service may have changed the location of taxa that have a sensitive status. It is therefore wise to

1. Map the taxa,
2. Examine online or download the records to identify any data sensitivity, record fields and particularly, any assertions
3. Filter these records in the Spatial Portal (see how to use faceting and filtering) to create the desired subset
4. Run the tool on the new filtered taxa layer

The tool requests

1. The area to be used as a bounding area for the calculation of AOO and EOO
2. The taxa to be used (this can be a species list)
3. The grid size to be used for AOO (default 2km)

The outputs are

1. The number of records used for the calculations
2. The taxa used
3. Area of Occupancy (AOO: sq.km)
4. Extent of Occurrence (EOO: sq.km)
5. New point layer of the taxa occurrence
6. New area layer: AOO
7. New area layer: EOO (the minimum convex hull)

The statistics are downloaded automatically to your system as a text file and named as “Calculated AOO and EOO.txt”

NOTE: We hope that ‘full spatial resolution’ records will be able to be made available for this analysis in the near future, but mapping high-resolution data would be disabled, except for authorised users.

Generating Co-occurence/Co-location lists

Tools | AOO and Tools | Area report can be used as an efficient way of generating lists of species are co-located (co-occur) with a target species or species list. For example, to identify which species co-occur with say within 1km of occurrences of Casuarina obesa in Westerna Australia, go through the following steps

1. Ad to map | species | Casuarina obesa
2. Zoom and pan to the area of interest, in this case, Western Australian records
3. Tools | AOO and EOO | Area=current extent | Casuarina obesa | 0.01 (~1km)
4. Tools | Area report | Area of occupancy (area): Casuarina obesa
5. In the Area report pop-up window, click on List button next to “Number of species – spatially valid only”
6. In new pop-up, press the Next button as the defaults should be correct
7. A table of species is produced and this can be downloaded as a CSV file by pressing the Download button

References

IUCN (2012). IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria: Version 3.1. Second edition. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: IUCN. iv + 32pp. http://jr.iucnredlist.org/documents/redlist_cats_crit_en.pdf

Joppa, L. N., Butchart, S. H. M., Hoffmann, M., Bachman, S. P., Akçakaya, H. R., Moat, J. F., Böhm, M., Holland, R. A., Newton, A., Polidoro, B. and Hughes, A. (2016), Impact of alternative metrics on estimates of extent of occurrence for extinction risk assessment. Conservation Biology, 30: 362–370. doi:10.1111/cobi.12591 [” We conclude that a single, relatively resolutionindependent measure to calculate EOO (MCP)—as recommended by current IUCN Red List guidelines— will allow for assessments across species and taxonomic groups to be comparable over space and time and will ensure far greater consistency across the IUCN Red List.”]

R CRAN package for generating AOO, EOO, MBP etc for IUCN stats: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rCAT/index.html

There are three parameters for this tool

1. An area – predefined or generated on the fly
2. A grid size in decimal degrees (0.01 degree roughly = 1km)
3. The name of the point layer to be generated.

Panoramio is a free service that allows you to upload, view and map spatially registered images (images that have be geolocated: given a latitude and longitude). The Spatial Portal of the ALA uses the Panoramio web services to tap and display any available images with a location within the displayed map window.

To activate the Panoramio function, click on the image icon beneath the Google Map scale slider bar. To de-activate Panoramio, click the icon agin and any displayed images will be removed.

The images are extremely useful for seeing what the area around the location looks like. The images may be of people but are more likely to be of landscapes. From these images, useful details can often be discerned, for example, vegetation type and structure, diversity in vegetation type, soil type, landscape, stream and river condition.

Only a limited number of images are displayed at any map scale, but the subset of images is dependent on the spatial extent of the map window. If the Panoramio function is enabled, zooming or panning the map will result in an update of the mapped thumbnail images. To see the images in more detail, just click on the image thumbnail and a larger image with links to image metadata and Panoramio will be displayed.

PLEASE: If you have taken images of sites for biological/environmental surveys, I would urge you to upload your images to Panoramio and share them with the research community and the public. Your attribution stays with the images and it is a great way of sharing a little of the information obtained from fieldwork. These images/photo points represent a wonderful source of information about a site at the time the photograph was taken. It does not matter if the images are of the landscape or the view from the corner point of a sample site.

Just zoom and pan the map to the area of interest and then click on the Panoramio icon beneath the zoom slider bar and a suite of thumbnails will be displayed on the map as below-

Clicking on the image on the map will take you to the Panoramio site and display a full size image with supplied metadata.

Note, this option does not allow for the faceting of previously defined areas, or for the use of species or species assemblages layers. However, occurence records can be filtered by an area defined during the process, as explained below.

An example of a facet would be for all occurrence records with a ‘Lifeform’ class of ‘Fungi’, ‘Chromista’ etc., or as having a ‘Basis of record’ class of ‘GenomicDNA’, or ‘Data Provider’ class of ‘Barcode of Life’ (BOLD). (See images below).

From the menu option, select ‘Add to Map’, and then ‘Facet’.

It is best to choose only spatially-valid records, unless this yields too few records for the application.  The ‘Define new area’ will involve an extra step (please refer to Add Area for additional information).

Choose one or more classes from the selected facet.

The current facet-able variables are (but these can change as new data is added):

If the number of classes within the facet is large, the classes will be paged. Paging of classes will also occur when selecting classes from facets on the map legend.

Three example facet images are shown below. Only one facet can be chosen but subsequent faceting of the mapped layer can be done using the layer legend (see below).

The following example, shows the resultant map after choosing to Add to Map a facet of ‘Basis of Record’ and selecting the class of ‘GenomicDNA’. Currently, only one data set in the Atlas, the ‘European Molecular Biology Laboratory Australian Mirror (EMBL)’ holds records labelled as molecular data. The layer had been renamed to ‘GenomicDNA’, by pressing the ‘Rename’ button and renaming the layer.

Once the occurrence layer is mapped, the records can be further filtered and faceted on all facetable fields using the existing legend tools. The image above shows the facet options in the legend. See Faceting and Filtering for more info »

In the example to the right and below, for the GenomicDNA faceted layer, we can choose to facet on ‘Order’ and choose the class, ‘Lepidoptera’.

Pressing the ‘Create layer’ button creates the new faceted layer that has all occurrences that include Genomic DNA data for Lepidopteran records (Butterflies and Moths).

In the image above, an area around Forbes has been added. The user can choose to selectively download only those records within the area. See Add Areas to Map » and Export Point Sample »

When the layer metadata icon icon is clicked in the layers list the metadata popup is displayed for the Faceted layer. The metadata can be displayed in a separate window.

The basemaps are treated as a single underlying map layer.

The options relating to the Map Options layer are all within the Legend Pane, as shown in the image above.

Selecting, deselecting and hiding layers

The above figure shows that next to the Map options special layer on the top-left of the Spatial Portal window you can either

1. Delete all layers currently listed. This will remove them from the layer list and the map and cannot be recovered unless you have done  Save Session. You will be given a warning before the layers are removed, rubbed out, deleted and eradicated.
2. Show all. This selects all the layers in the layer list and displays them on the map.
3. Hide all. This does the opposite of (2), de-selecting all the layers in the layers list and removing them from the map.

Changing the basemap

The Base map can be changed by selecting the appropriate radio button. The outline map was designed for producing simple thumbnail images of the map. The minimal basemap uses open streetmaps, while the ‘Normal’ and ‘Satellite’ make use of Google’s map services. One of the basemaps should be suitable for your application.

Add WMS Layer

WMS stands for the OGC Web Map Services (WMS) standard. This standard allows for the display of images that are registered geographically from an external (or internal) service provider. The layers are images and not the data behind the images so these layers do not support all the functions of the ‘Add to Map | Layers’ stored in the Spatial Portal. These external layers are however very handy if they display information that may be useful for providing additional context. If you know, or can find a web address of a Web Map Service “Get Capabilities”, any layers they make available can be draped over the map. Examples of such services are provided to demonstrate this function.

Three example WMS servers are given as all three have data layers that are very useful in the context of the Atlas:

• http://data.auscover.org.au/geoserver/wms?request=getCapabilities

• http://geoserver.imos.org.au/geoserver/wms?VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetCapabilities&SERVICE=WMS

• http://www.ga.gov.au/gis/services/earth_science/GA_Surface_Geology_of_Australia/MapServer/WMSServer?request=GetCapabilities

Paste the URL of a WMS server, possibly one of the three examples above, into the WMS Server URL text field. Then press the “Select Layers” button. Assuming the web service URL is correct, a list of available layers will be seen in the dropdown box and one layer at a time can be added to the Spatial Portal.

The address of a single layer can also be cut and pasted into the WMS getMap URL field to add the layer. Any valid single WMS get layer request with the appropriate parameters can be used in the Atlas.

Selecting the load all layers WMS option, populates the Layers pulldown list, after pasting in a valid WMS server URL. You can select any single layer at a time from the service if the WMS “get capabilities” response lists more than one layer available.

This is the result of adding the Wirada: anra basins layer to the Spatial Portal-

Download Map

The map can be downloaded in a variety of formats to suit use in documents or for preview.
For more information »

Reset Map

This option is used to reset the spatial portal back to the default state – it removes all layers, switches to the normal base layer and zooms to show the Australian region.

This tool provides a powerful way of identifying layers/variables that appear related in some way to species distributions. The user can then redo these Scatterplots individually to further investigate the relationships between the environments given by the two environmental axes of the Scatterplot, for each occurrence record.

From the menu option, select ‘Tools’, and then ‘Scatterplot List’.

Note the ‘Define new area’ will involve an extra step (please refer to Add Area for additional information). In this example the state of Victoria has been pre-defined and selected from the ‘States including coastal waters’ contextual layer.

It would usually be wise to use only points for occurrences that are deemed spatially valid, unless this yields far too few records. The more comprehensive and consistent the occurrence records are, the better the results are likely to be.

Species assemblages and the import of species location points are also methods that can be used for the occurrence points on the scatterplots.

Highlight active area occurrences. Selecting this option will highlight those occurrences on the scatterplot occurring within a map’s defined active area. This option is best for highlighting a sub-region to show where points of a spatially distinct area fall within the ‘environmental space’ defined by the two environmental axes. Refer to Add Area for additional information.

The ‘My Area 1’ is the sub-region that will be highlighted in the list of scatterplot images below ».

There are many ways to select the environmental layers. You can take a quick look using the best five independent terrestrial layers. You can also use any previous layer selections, search for layers, paste in a set of layer names or select them individually in the list of environmental layers. If you search for layers remember that you can also search on layer keywords, for example ‘marine’ or ’2030′. As mentioned above, test out various combinations of environmental layers and look out for patterns shown in the display of species points on the scatterplots.

The background taxa group is this case is the genus Eucalyptus. This gives us a good indication of what environments the genus covers and what portion of that environment is covered by E. mellidora. However, choosing a competing species or genus might also be very useful in identifying their (environmental) niche.

 List of each of the different combinations of Scatterplot images based on the chosen environmental layers.

In these scatterplot images immediately above and below, the points ringed in red come from the selected ‘My Area 1‘ of north-western Victoria.

In these scatterplot images the ‘display possible environments in area’ produce a grey-scale background on the scatterplot that delineates the area of that combination of environments that occur within the full range of possible environmental values. Environmental combinations outside the environmental envelope do not occur in nature and are shown in light blue. The grey-scale: Light colours imply a greater area of the environmental combination than darker colours, thus providing an indication of the spatial extents of the associated environments.

Of course, you can display both the ‘possible environments in an area’ and a background species or species assemblage, together in the list of scatterplot images by choosing the appropriate options.