Dear Colleagues,
We cordially invite you to a seminar „Integrating patterns, trends, and predictors of biodiversity across spatial scales“ by Dr. Petr Keil. The seminar will be held on 20. 6. at 12:30 in the D222 room (MCEV II – FŽP II building) at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, CZU Prague. Please find below an abstract introducing Petr's speech along with his biosketch.
We are looking forward to meet you,
Petra Šímová & Research group Spatial Science in Ecology and Environment
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Presenter: Petr Keil, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany. Google Scholar Profile.
Abstract: Where on Earth is biodiversity? How does it change in time? What drives its variation? This is still unclear, mostly for two reasons: (1) The answers depend on spatial scale and (2), our data on geographic distribution of biodiversity, and its temporal dynamics, are extremely scarce, and we lack straightforward ways to integrate them. Moreover, there are spatial and temporal scales for which we have no data at all, and we will never have in the foreseeable future. I have developed methods and concepts that aim to overcome this gap, and allow to predict species distributions, biodiversity, and its drivers at spatial scales and areas with no data. I have also been working on a predictive scaling theory for extinction and biodiversity loss. Finally, I have been exploring the connection between biodiversity and inter-specific associations across scales. I will summarize some of these concepts and findings, with the emphasis on scaling relationships and cross-scale models, and I will show how scale-explicit thinking changes our perception of the ongoing biodiversity crisis.
Biosketch: Petr Keil is a researcher working at Biodiversity Synthesis group of Jon Chase at iDiv. He is interested in explaining and predicting trends of biodiversity at local, regional, and continental scales. He integrates heterogeneous data from disparate sources, which includes systematic surveys, haphazard field observations, atlases, field guides, checklists, red lists, climatic layers, and remotely sensed data. His hobby is statistics.
Figure with example of Petr’s work: First map of global patterns of species richness of trees at two spatial resolutions. From Keil & Chase (2019)