New developments and applications in the ANUCLIM spatial climatic and bioclimatic modelling package

Abstract

ANUCLIM (Xu and Hutchinson, 2011) is a unique software package used to support the spatial modelling and mapping of environmental and natural resources. It has been extensively employed for scientific research, teaching and policy making across study areas at various spatial scales. The package enables users to readily interrogate estimated values, in point and grid form, of monthly, seasonal and annual mean climate variables from supplied elevation dependent monthly mean climate surfaces and an underlying digital elevation model (DEM). The climate surfaces have been derived by the ANUSPLIN package (Hutchinson, 2004) and support interrogation at sub-kilometre scale. A key strength of the ANUCLIM package is its ability to generate bioclimatic profiles from known species locations to predict and map species distributions, in current, projected future and past climates. It can also generate a comprehensive set of climate parameters and growth indices for modelling growth of crops and plants. The package currently has four programs, MTHCLIM, BIOCLIM, BIOMAP and GROCLIM. MTHCLIM is used to obtain estimates of monthly mean climate variables from supplied climate surfaces at specified points or grids. BIOCLIM, in conjunction with BIOMAP, is a bioclimatic prediction system based on the bioclimatic envelope method devised by Nix (1986). GROCLIM is used to generate plant growth indices based on a simplified model of plant growth response to light, thermal and water regimes (Nix, 1981). The latest version of ANUCLIM, Version 6.1, incorporates substantial upgrades. In particular, the package now allows each of its four component programs to systematically incorporate the impacts of projected climate change. These projected climate changes can be provided either as simple constants, or more commonly, as grids of broad scale changes as obtained from outputs of General Circulation Models (GCMs) under various emission scenarios. For Australia, such grids can be obtained from the OzClim website of CSIRO (2007). This enables the systematic investigation of the impacts of projected climate change on socio-environmental systems.