The Spatial Ecology group at the University of Lausanne is specialized in predictive habitat distribution modeling, mainly at the level of species, but also at the level of communities and habitat types.

This approach is currently being developed and tested as tools for the management or rare and endangered species, for evaluating the invasive potential of neophytes plant species, for evaluating landscape diversity and fragmentation, as well as for preparing scenarios of climate change impact on plant species distribution, diversity and communities. More dynamic models are also being developed for simulating the spread of species in the landscape, for instance after a climatic change or to simulate invasion processes. Finally, the set-up of permanent observation plots for monitoring the flora and fauna is another development of our group. It aims at testing, in a near or later future, the validity of our models and scenarios.

Our preferred study areas are alpine landscapes of the Swiss Prealps of Vaud and the national scale. Modeled species include Eryngium alpinum (rare and threatened) and Ambrosia artemisiifolia (invasive). We also use simulation, such as virtual species in a real landscape, to solve methodological problems and questions.

• Detecting preservation and reintroduction sites for endangered plant species using a two-step modeling and field approach
  Rusconi, Olivia; Broennimann, Olivier; Storrer, Yannick; Le Bayon, Renee-Claire; Guisan, Antoine; et al.
  Conservation Science And Practice 10.1111/csp2.12800  OCT 2022
• Protection gaps in Amazon floodplains will increase with climate change: Insight from the world's largest scaled freshwater fish
  Aquatic Conservation-marine And Freshwater Ecosystems 10.1002/aqc.3877  NOV 2022
• Accounting for niche truncation to improve spatial and temporal predictions of species distributions
  Frontiers In Ecology And Evolution 10.3389/fevo.2022.944116  AUG 4 2022
• Modeling the distribution of coprophagous beetle species in the Western Swiss Alps
  Alpine Entomology, 10.3897/alpento.6.83730  JUL 6 2022
• From white to green: Snow cover loss and increased vegetation productivity in the European Alps
  Rumpf, SB; Gravey, M; (...); Guisan, A
  Jun 3 2022 | SCIENCE 376 (6597) , pp.1119-+ 10.1126/science.abn6697
• Comparative analysis of diversity and environmental niches of soil bacterial, archaeal, fungal and protist communities reveal niche divergences along environmental gradients in the Alps
  Malard, LA; Mod, HK; (...); Guisan, A
  Jun 2022 | SOIL BIOLOGY & BIOCHEMISTRY 169  10.1016/j.soilbio.2022.108674
• Mainstreaming remotely sensed ecosystem functioning in ecological niche models
  Regos, Adrian; Goncalves, Joao; Arenas-Castro, Salvador; Alcaraz-Segura, Domingo; Guisan, Antoine; et al.
  Remote Sensing In Ecology And Conservation 10.1002/rse2.255  FEB 2022
• Think globally, measure locally: The MIREN standardized protocol for monitoring plant species distributions along elevation gradients
  Haider, Sylvia; Lembrechts, Jonas J.; McDougall, Keith; Pauchard, Anibal; Alexander, Jake M.; et al.
  Ecology And Evolution 10.1002/ece3.8590  FEB 2022
• Food and habitats requirements of the Eurasian Scops Owl (Otus scops) in Switzerland revealed by very high-resolution multi-scale models
  Theux, Coralie; Klein, Noelle; Garibaldi, Elodie; Jacot, Alain; Eichhorn, Sylvain; et al.
  Ibis 10.1111/ibi.13007  JAN 2022
• Climate Change Impacts the Protective Effect of Forests: A Case Study in Switzerland (vol 4, 682923, 2021)
  Moos, Christine; Guisan, Antoine; Randin, Christophe F.; Lischke, Heike
  Frontiers In Forests And Global Change 10.3389/ffgc.2021.791067  NOV 3 2021
• Setting priorities for climate change adaptation of Critical Sites in the Africa-Eurasian waterbird flyways
  Breiner, Frank T.; Anand, Mira; Butchart, Stuart H. M.; Florke, Martina; Fluet-Chouinard, Etienne; et al.
  Global Change Biology  10.1111/gcb.15961 NOV 2021
• Data integration methods to account for spatial niche truncation effects in regional projections of species distribution
  Chevalier, Mathieu; Broennimann, Olivier; Cornuault, Josselin; Guisan, Antoine
  Ecological Applications  10.1002/eap.2427  OCT 2021
• Using a robust multi-settings inference framework on published datasets still reveals limited support for the abundant centre hypothesis: More testing needed on other datasets
  Chevalier, Mathieu; Broennimann, Olivier; Guisan, Antoine
  Global Ecology And Biogeography  10.1111/geb.13376 NOV 2021
• Soil protist function varies with elevation in the Swiss Alps
  Mazel, Florent; Malard, Lucie; Niculita-Hirzel, Helene; Yashiro, Erika; Mod, Heidi K.; et al.
  Environmental Microbiology 10.1111/1462-2920.15686  AUG 2021
• Designing Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research on Mountains: What Place for the Unexpected?
  Otero, Iago; Darbellay, Frederic; Reynard, Emmanuel; Hetenyi, Gyoergy; Perga, Marie-Elodie; et al.
  Mountain Research And Development 10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-20-00036.1  NOV 2020
• National assessments of species vulnerability to climate change strongly depend on selected data sources
  Scherrer, Daniel; Esperon-Rodriguez, Manuel; Beaumont, Linda J.; Barradas, Victor L.; Guisan, Antoine
  Diversity And Distributions 10.1111/ddi.13275  Early Access: MAY 2021
• Climate change exposure of waterbird species in the African-Eurasian flyways
  Nagy, Szabolcs; Breiner, Frank T.; Anand, Mira; Butchart, Stuart h. m.; Florke, Martina; et al.
  Bird Conservation International  10.1017/S0959270921000150 APR 2021
• Distance to native climatic niche margins explains establishment success of alien mammals
  Broennimann, Olivier; Petitpierre, Blaise; Chevalier, Mathieu; Gonzalez-Suarez, Manuela; Jeschke, Jonathan M.; et al.
  Nature Communications 10.1038/s41467-021-22693-0 Published: APR 21 2021
• Low spatial autocorrelation in mountain biodiversity data and model residuals
  Chevalier, Mathieu; Mod, Heidi; Broennimann, Olivier; Di Cola, Valeria; Schmid, Sarah; Niculita-Hirzel, Helene; Pradervand, Jean-Nicolas; Schmidt, Benedikt R; Ursenbacher, Sylvain; Pellissier, Loic; Guisan, Antoine
  Ecosphere  10.1002/ecs2.3403 Published: MAR 2021
• Predicting spatial patterns of soil bacteria under current and future environmental conditions
  Mod, Heidi K.; Buri, Aline; Yashiro, Erika; Guex, Nicolas; Malard, Lucie; et al.
  Isme Journal 10.1038/s41396-021-00947-5   Early Access: MAR 2021
• Temporal variability is key to modelling the climatic niche
  Angeles Perez-Navarro, Maria; Broennimann, Olivier; Angel Esteve, Miguel; Miguel Moya-Perez, Juan; Francisca Carreno, Maria; et al.
  Diversity And Distributions   DOI: 10.1111/ddi.13207 MAR 2021
• Intraspecific differentiation: Implications for niche and distribution modelling
  Collart, Flavien; Hedenas, Lars; Broennimann, Olivier; Guisan, Antoine; Vanderpoorten, Alain
  Journal Of Biogeography   DOI: 10.1111/jbi.14009  FEB 2021
• A quantitative assessment of rockfall influence on forest structure in the Swiss Alps
  Moos, Christine; Khelidj, Nora; Guisan, Antoine; Lischke, Heike; Randin, Christophe F.
  European Journal Of Forest Research  DOI: 10.1007/s10342-020-01317-0  FEB 2021

• Plant species – environment relationships
• Environmental niche stability in space and time
• Rare plant species modelling, model-based sampling,
• Anticipating plant invasions, weed risk assessments
• Climate threat to plant diversity, predicting range shifts and extinctions
• Dispersal modelling and future plant migrations in fragmented landscapes
• Assembling species predictions into communities, biotic interactions
• Spatial modelling of functional and phylogenetic plant diversity