Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Comparison Of Machine Learning Algorithms For Modeling Species Distributions: Application To Stream Invertebrates From Western Usa Reference Sites, Margi Dubal

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Machine learning algorithms are increasingly being used by ecologists to model and predict the distributions of individual species and entire assemblages of sites. Accurate prediction of distribution of species is an important factor in any modeling. We compared prediction accuracy of four machine learning algorithms-random forests, classification trees, support vector machines, and gradient boosting machines to a traditional method, linear discriminant models (LDM), on a large set of stream invertebrate data collected at 728 reference sites in the western United States. Classifications were constructed for individual species and for assemblages of sites clustered a priori by similarity on biological characteristics. …