Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and natural resources 2016 number 5S

In conditions of extensive and difficult-of-access territories of Siberia, data about distribution of plant and animal species are fragmentary; therefore, for identifying the potential habitats of species we propose to use computer modeling methods as implemented in the MaxEnt 3.3.3k program. Using information on environmental parameters in the known localities of a species being modeled, the program determines the likelihood of its existence on the remaining territory. As the source of information on environmental parameters, it is customary to use the WorldClim database. However, our attempt to model the geographic dis tribution for Anemone baicalensis Turcz. ex Lebed., a nemoral relict occuring in the Baikal region only on the Khamar-Daban Range turned out to be invalid because of a small number of meteostations, the data from which are included in WorldClim. To resolve this problem we made use of the GRID model of the Baikal natural territory (sc 1:1 000 000) constructed on the basis of data taken from published atlases of thematic maps. The GRID model was used to obtain the probable geographic distribution of a reasonably high accuracy. The largest value for the distribution of the species corresponds to the altitude above the sea level (62.3 %), and to the annual precipitation amount (36.8 %). The potential distribution area of A. baicalensis within the northern macroslope of the Khamar-Daban Range correspond to the entire nemoral refugium situated there. The spurs of the Baikal and Barguzin Ranges and the foothill areas of Eastern Sayan as identified in the model are also recognized as nemoral refugia. It might be recommended that WorldClim data should only be used in a small-scale modeling, whereas some other sources should be used for medium and large scales, such as the contemporary atlases of thematic maps in order to substan tially improve the quality of the resulting model.