Landscape ecologists recognize a paper that promises to redefine the understanding of species distribution modeling, taking into account human activity.
The North American regional chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IAL-NA) selected the paper of Veronica Frans and Jianguo “Jack” Liu, published in the journal Natural ecology and evolution in 2024 as a recipient of the 2025 Excellent paper in Landscape Ecology Award.
The award was announced at the annual conference of Ial-NA in Raleigh, NC, in April. Members of Ial-NA are asked to nominate candidate papers on the subject of landscape ecology published in every magazine.
The paper of Frans and Liu, “Gaps and possibilities in the modeling of human influence on species distributions in the anthropocene” deal with a central topic in the field of landscape ecology – human effects on the landscape extension pattern of biological diversity. By carrying out comprehensive literature research of over 12,800 research articles from the past two decades, Frans and Liu found that only 11% of the studies have taken on human factors, which raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of the current landscape practices in combating anthropogenic effects on ecosystems. In addition, the authors found that over 80% of the 2.307 unique identified human predictors only appeared once in the analysis, which indicates a lack of consistency and geographical distortion when using human predictors that can lead to ineffective maintenance strategies and guidelines.
Frans and Liu not only create 15 stimulating questions to combat these knowledge gaps and set a clear route for future research, but also offer a roadmap for the expansion of ecological landscape theory. This paper represents significant progress in understanding the ecology of landscapes by emphasizing critical gaps in the modeling of species and underlying methods of ecological theories. This innovative work offers a significant contribution to understanding the ecology of landscapes in the anthropocene.
Frans, who received her doctorate at Michigan State University, is Stanford Science Fellow and NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University. Liu thinks the Rachel Carson chairman for sustainability, is a respected professor at the MSU and acts as a founding director of the Center for System Integration and Sustainability. Liu is a central faculty member of the ecology, evolution and behavior of the MSU, from which Frans is an alumna.
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