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Cross-scale contradictions in ecological relationships

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Abstract

Context

Not accounting for spatial heterogeneity in ecological analyses can cause modeled relationships to vary across spatial scales, specifically different levels of spatial resolution. These varying results hinder both the utility of data collected at one spatial scale for analyses at others and the determination of underlying processes.

Objectives

To briefly review existing methods for analyzing data collected at multiple scales, highlight the effects of spatial heterogeneity on the utility of these methods, and to illustrate a practical statistical method to account for the sources of spatial heterogeneity when they are unknown.

Methods

Using simulated examples, we show how not accounting for the drivers of spatial heterogeneity in statistical models can cause contradictory findings regarding relationship direction across spatial scales. We then show how mixed effects models can remedy this multiscaling issue.

Results

Ignoring sources of spatial heterogeneity in statistical models with coarse spatial scales produced contradictory results to the true underlying relationship. Treating drivers of spatial heterogeneity as random effects in a mixed effects model, however, allowed us to uncover this true relationship.

Conclusions

Mixed effects models is advantageous as it is not always necessary to know the influential explanatory variables that cause spatial heterogeneity and no additional data are required. Furthermore, this approach is well documented, can be applied to data having various distribution types, and is easily executable using multiple statistical packages.

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Acknowledgments

Funding was provided by a NSF Macrosystem Biology Grant # 1241932. We would like to thank Dr. Jianguo Wu for comments that greatly improved the overall quality of this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Kelly-Ann Dixon Hamil, Whitney K. Huang & Hao Zhang

  2. Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Basil V. Iannone III & Songlin Fei

Authors
  1. Kelly-Ann Dixon Hamil
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  2. Basil V. Iannone III
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  3. Whitney K. Huang
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  4. Songlin Fei
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  5. Hao Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kelly-Ann Dixon Hamil.

Additional information

Special issue: Macrosystems ecology: Novel methods and new understanding of multi-scale patterns and processes.

Guest Editors: S. Fei, Q. Guo, and K. Potter.

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Dixon Hamil, KA., Iannone III, B.V., Huang, W.K. et al. Cross-scale contradictions in ecological relationships. Landscape Ecol 31, 7–18 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-015-0288-z

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