THE SPECIES-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS (SER) DATABASE: AN OVERVIEW AND SOME CAUTIONS AND CAVEATS IN ITS USE

- Bruce Marcot, Terrestrial Ecology Staff Leader, Science Integration Team, Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project

11 April 1996

This document provides some guidance and cautions in interpreting the SER database information. I provide an overview of the SER database contents; some cautions and caveats on its use; some information on the need for testing the SER database; an overview of additional databases and maps developed in conjunction with the SER database; and areas of potential future development of the SER and ancillary databases.

In this document, "assessment" refers to the Ecological Assessment conducted by the Science Integration Team, Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project.

OVERVIEW OF THE SER DATABASE

The Species-Environment Relations (SER) database was developed for the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project with the objective of providing the first compilation of such information for this specific assessment and planning area. As with any database or model, the user should understand its genesis and shortcomings and adhere to those when applying the tool.

The SER database, developed in Paradox 4.5 for DOS, includes information on the following individual species and species groups:

Individual species of plants and allies (fungi, lichens, and bryophytes): 588 taxa (species and in some cases subspecies), with focus on the 143 C1 and C2 USFWS Candidate species, but also including a total of 394 fungi, 2 nonvascular plant, and 192 vascular plant species

Groups of species of plants and allies: 82 species groups, including 11 bryophyte groups, 39 lichen groups, and 32 vascular plant groups

Invertebrates: 206 individual species or species taxonomic groups, as examples of ecological functional groups; does not include mollusks

Vertebrates: all 468 species that regularly occur in the interior Columbia River Basin assessment area (excluding casual and accidental species), including 26 amphibians, 27 reptiles, 283 birds, and 132 mammals

The SER information on plant and plant ally, invertebrate, and vertebrate species includes:

- species taxonomy including class, common name, scientific name, and scientific name acronym code

- geographic extent within the CRB

- degree of endemism and percent of range within the CRB

- panelists' median level of confidence

- general comments on species ecology and status

- dispersal mode and conditions required for successful dispersal

- key ecological functions, including category codes as in Table KEF, and additional explanatory comments

- key environmental correlates, including category codes as in Table KEC, specifics on categories or values of the correlates, additional explanatory comments, and season(s) in which they apply

- vegetation cover types and structural stages selected by the species

Additional SER information on plants and allies includes:

- population trend category, where known

- required pollinators

- life form

- potential effects of various management activities, including exotic species, fire, grazing, logging, and mining

- correlations with biophysical conditions, including canopy cover, understory cover, climate, topography, geology, soil, substrates

- whether the species is a bioindicator

Full data dictionaries describing all tables and fields in the SER database are available.

A user-friendly front-end to the SER database and additional data (see below under the section Beyond the SER Database) is currently under development. This will be useful for making specific database queries and generating tables and reports.

SOME CAUTIONS AND CAVEATS IN ITS USE

The user of the SER database should be aware of some important shortcomings and conditions of the information.

1. Completeness of the SER data base.

Limits of time and funding, and the absence of prior comprehensive analyses of this type, meant focusing the work for plants on listed and potentially at-risk species. For invertebrates, it meant describing an important but selected set of ecological functions of species groups and detailing information on only a minuscule sampling of individual species. Luckily, fuller knowledge on vertebrates allowed us to address nearly all species. A fuller analysis, beyond the scope of this study, still needs to be done on the entire flora and on a broader invertebrate fauna of the assessment area. For example, we have not described diversity and functions of parasitoids and parasites and of the many micropathogens present in the area. Disease and pathogenic effects may be critical factors limiting some plant and animal populations.

Specifically, the SER database information is incomplete in several ways: (a) only the rare macrofungi species are included; many other less rare macrofungi species likely occur in the assessment area; (b) lichens and bryophytes are included as species groups; species were grouped by growth substrate or by function; (c) only the more rare or at-risk vascular plants were included by species, although a number of unique plant communities are also part of thedatabase; (d) only a small portion of the entire invertebrate fauna is included by species, as examples of particular taxonomic or ecological functional groups. Much basic field work remains to be done on invertebrate taxonomy and ecology.

Also, a few groups of soil microorganisms, including rotifers, bacteria, and nematodes, were included in the SER database, but these are far from being completely represented. Other groups of microorganisms, including microfungi, are not included. Little if any empirical work has been done on most groups of microorganisms in the assessment area.

2. Confidence in the information.

Most of the information compiled for this project did not come from empirical field experiments with controls and adequate sample sizes for statistical analysis; it came from surveys, individual observations from species experts, unpublished data provided by experts, and ongoing studies. Such information is reliable in that it came from among the best -- often the only -- local species experts. However, because of the dearth of scientific studies on most species, experts often expressed only moderate to low confidence in how well species are currently understood scientifically.

Also, experts sometimes disagreed or varied in their individual confidence in existing information of specific species. Our panel approach attempted to ameliorate such differences by collecting the full array of knowledge among experts rather than by trying to reach consensus on information included in the SER database.

The species information in this study -- particularly in the SER data base model -- is imprecise because it applies to a wide array of sites and habitats at the broad scale. None of the species considered in this assessment has been studied across this full range of habitats and environmental conditions present throughout the assessment area. Of the species studies that are available, none has looked at the full array of specific substrates, key environmental correlates, and key ecological functions. Also, few if any species studies rate as comprising replication with controls, experimental manipulation, and large sample sizes, empirical, validated relations, and peer review with publication in primary scientific journals. We expect that, over time, local information and well-designed studies can substantially help improve at a finer resolution much of the broad-scale information we have gathered and broad-scale patterns we have deduced. However, some information, such as range-wide location data on rare plants and range maps of vertebrates, can only be produced at the broad scale.

3. Resolution of the environmental data.

The descriptions of vegetation cover types and their structural stages, as used in the habitat portion of the SER database, are based on vegetation classifications developed at a broad scale in the interior Columbia River Basin, using 1-km2 resolution. This level of resolution is far too broad to identify more patch- or site-specific conditions and substrates, so important for describing habitats for most plants and invertebrates and for describing conditions at watershed and individual project levels. Our work must be seen as an initial step toward more site-specific evaluations.

4. Use of categorical data.

Much of the information on key environmental correlates and key ecological functions in the SER database is in the form of categories or descriptors,rather than quantitative or mathematical relations. This is because of the paucity of quantitative data or studies available on most species, especially across the range of conditions present in the assessment area.

5. Implications of the lack of field studies on most species.

The SER database cannot be fully specified for all species at this time because of incomplete scientific knowledge. There is a basic lack of empirical data on most species' environmental correlates within the assessment area. Although some of the vertebrates are relatively well known, many are not, and most plants, plant allies, and invertebrates are poorly studied. One implication of this lack of knowledge is that it is difficult or impossible to build habitat quality index models (such as habitat suitability index models, or GIS models of habitat quality gradients) for most species at this time.

6. Mismatch of spatial resolution with species habitats and environmental correlates.

The SER database does not depict environmental and habitat conditions for species at scale of resolution finer than the broad, coarse-grained scales used in this assessment. This scale mismatch is rather unavoidable for some species -- particularly most of the poorly-studied plants and allies and the invertebrates.

One implication of this scale mismatch is that the refinement and use of appropriately-scaled databases would have to await application at finer scales of geographic resolution, such as individual National Forest, BLM Districts, or watersheds. This is particularly so where information does exist on habitat or environmental correlates of species that respond to conditions too fine-grained for the current assessment and database.

One implication of developing an SER database at the broad scale for some species that respond to finer-scale conditions, has been that GIS and spatial models of species habitat and environment relations could not be developed for this assessment. This is because the GIS data simply were not fine-grained enough to depict the species habitats and environments.

An outcome of not being able to model in GIS all key environmental correlates of species is that, at least for generalist species, prediction of potential habitat tends to be grossly overestimated. At the broad scale of this assessment, such analyses tended to be insensitive to changes in environmental components represented poorly or not at all in the GIS models, such as snags, down wood, climatic factors, and human density. The solution is to develop more finer-grained GIS data for specific portions or habitats within the assessment area, thereby explicitly representing these other unmodeled correlates in the species GIS models. We hope that the SER database provides a common starting point for such further work.

THE NEED FOR TESTING

The SER database was compiled to answer very broad-scale questions about geographic patterns and environment relations throughout the Interior Columbia Basin. To use the SER database at levels of individual National Forests or BLM Districts, or at finer scales, the user might refine the contents of the SER to local conditions and apply their own biological judgment. Ideally, when the SER database or a refinement thereof is used as an aid in critical resource-management decisions, it should be accompanied by local validation testing or monitoring.

Essentially, the species-environment relations represented in the SER database constitute a set of hypotheses posed by species expert. The hypotheses describe how individual species or species groups might correlate with, or respond to, specific habitat conditions as affected by land management activities. Such hypotheses should be made explicit when using any information such as that in the SER database, and they can be formally tested through inventory, monitoring, and validation studies on selected species and environments. Such an approach fits well with the concept of adaptive management, by improving our knowledge and testing what we think we know.

BEYOND THE SER DATABASE

Also developed for the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project were a series of additional databases and maps, designed to be complementary to the SER database information. These additional databases and maps included the following:

Other Species Data Tables

Additional tables and data bases were provided by contractors and contributors on various species groups. These are not currently knit into the SER database but are available as additional species checklists and, in some cases, additional information on geographic area of occurrence. They include databases or lists of:

- lichens, 775 species

- vascular plants: a draft CRB Flora Data Base, provided by USFS botanist Karl Urban, currently contains 8078 species; see below for further development plans

Species Range Maps and Biodiversity Maps

A total of 487 maps of species and biodiversity distribution were compiled for the project, in several formats: hard copy, ArcInfo, ArcView II, and Moss. (Not all maps are necessarily available in all formats.) They include:

Invertebrates: 14 range maps of selected taxa within the interior CRB assessment area.

Plants: compilation of State Heritage location data on rare and candidate plants within the interior CRB assessment area (heritage locations were included on ArcInfo and ArcView maps, but are not part of the above total); also 2 specific range maps on a cover type and a species.

Vertebrates: 471 species distribution maps on 29 amphibians, 26 reptiles, 315 birds, and 101 mammals.

Biodiversity maps (3 maps total):

- centers of concentration of biodiversity and high element occurrences for plants

- centers of concentration of biodiversity for animals (invertebrates and vertebrates, aquatic and terrestrial

- "hot spots" of biodiversity where three or more biodiversity centers for plants or animals intersect

Species rarity and endemism maps (3 maps total):

- centers of concentration of species rarity and endemism for plants

- centers of concentration of species rarity and endemism for animals

- "hot spots" of centers of species rarity and endemism where three or more such centers of concentration for plants or animals intersect

POTENTIAL FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF SER AND ANCILLARY DATA BASES

Several avenues of further database development might provide fruitful and useful for research, monitoring, and management:

- invertebrates: more inclusions of other examples and functional groups; possibly, explicit ties to the Hopkins U.S. Information System (HUSSI) data base

- vascular plants: completion of the CRB Flora Data Base to include all approximately 9,000 species, listing at least current taxonomy, life form, and geographic occurrence

- completion of the user-friendly front-end for the SER model; compiling the entire query system and all data bases into a stand-alone model; publication and distribution on CD-ROM or appropriate medium (under development)