A joint model for the estimation of species distributions and environmental characteristics from point-referenced data

Predicting and explaining species occurrence using environmental characteristics is essential for nature conservation and management. Species distribution models consider species occurrence as the dependent variable and environmental conditions as the independent variables. Suitable conditions are estimated based on a sample of species observations, where one assumes that the underlying environmental conditions are known. This is not always the case, as environmental variables at broad spatial scales are regularly extrapolated from point-referenced data. However, treating the predicted environmental conditions as accurate surveys of independent variables at a specific point does not take into account their uncertainty.