Modeling environmental niche of Himalayan birch and remote sensing based vicarious validation

Abstract

The objective of the study was to model the environmental niche of a dominant treeline species (Himalayan birch or Betula utilis) in alpine region of Indian Himalaya and validate the findings using ground truth supported satellite remote sensing technique. It deals with the generation of bioclimatic indices from temperature and precipitation data, followed by fundamental environmental niche modeling based on the presence-only records of the alpine treeline ecotone (ATE) boundary species. The predicted fundamental environmental niche was validated in Uttarakhand, India using the alpine treeline ecotone boundary (a surrogate to realized niche), which was generated using IRS-P6 (LISS-III) satellite data for year 2006. The result demonstrates the ability of the niche models in assessing the probable extent of Himalayan birch distribution and its presence in treeline ecotone of Uttarakhand and the technique could be further used for modeling future scenario of the alpine treeline in Indian Himalaya. Resumen: El objetivo del estudio fue modelar el nicho ambiental de una especie dominante del limite de la vegetacion arborea (abedul del Himalaya o Betula utilis) en la region alpina del Himalaya indio, asi como validar los hallazgos con tecnicas satelitales de percepcion remota apoyadas en verificacion de campo. Se generaron indices bioclimaticos de datos de temperatura y precipitacion, seguido del modelado del nicho fundamental ambiental con base en registros