Tool for analyzing data on species distribution using parallel processing

• Grant number: 06/03946-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2006
• End date: June 21, 2007
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Electrical Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Liria Matsumoto Sato
• Grantee: Marcos Paulo Pereira Cabral dos Santos
• Host Institution: Escola Politécnica (EP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 04/11012-0 - Computer environment for modeling of spice distribution, AP.TEM

Abstract

Studies about the impact of the climate environmental alterations in the biodiversity and an analysis of species distribution are relevant to decisions of the actions that can impact in the environmental conservation. This research experience of undergraduation is in the context of the theme project "A framework for species distribution modeling", supported by FAPESP (Process 04/11012-0). The goal of this project is the development of a flexible and robust framework to provide the prediction of the species distribution. The methods commonly used to the prediction of species distribution are based on the concept of ecological niche. These methods combine species occurrence data with the environmental conditions at each point. Niche models are projected on geographical regions to predict where the analyzed species is presented. Nevertheless, these methods may demand excessive execution time. This research experience of undergraduation project intends to apply the concept of parallelism in the current version of the already available Openmodeller tool. Intending to reduce the execution time and so permitting analysis which demand unfeasible execution time and also to provide more complex analysis by using various algorithms and environmental data. (AU)