Are we overestimating wildlife habitat?

Changwan Seo of the University of Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues think that we are overestimating the wildlife habitat. They attribute the reasons for this overestimation to the present models that we are using. Present models divide the world into 50-kilometre grid squares, which gives a very coarse resolution. Changwan Seo and colleagues tested four models at a variety of spatial scales. The team found that larger the grid size, the more the chances of overestimating the amount of habitat available to a species. This could be in the range of two or three times the actual range available. The solution is to run models with smaller grid sizes, even though this costs more. Full details of the study can be accessed at (Biology Letters,DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0476).