Various measures of potential evapotranspiration have species-specific impact on species distribution models

Abstract From: (The growth and distribution of plant species in water limited environments is often limited by the atmospheric evaporative demands which us measured in terms of potential evaporation (PET). While PET estimated by different methods have been widely used to assess vegetation response to climate change, species distribution models offer unique opportunity to compare their efficiency in predicting habitat suitability of plant species. In this study, we perform the first multi-species comparison of two widely used metrics of PET i.e., Penman-Monteith and Thornthwaite, and show how they result in similar or different on projected distribution of water limited species and potential consequences on their conservation strategies [...]