Editing Biogeography (section)

==Modern applications==
[[File:Europe biogeography countries en.svg|thumb|300px|Biogeographic regions of Europe]]
Biogeography now incorporates many different fields including but not limited to physical geography, geology, botany and plant biology, zoology, general biology, and modelling. A biogeographer's main focus is on how the environment and humans affect the distribution of species as well as other manifestations of Life such as species or genetic diversity. Biogeography is being applied to biodiversity conservation and planning, projecting global environmental changes on species and biomes, projecting the spread of infectious diseases, invasive species, and for supporting planning for the establishment of crops. Technological evolving and advances have allowed for generating a whole suite of predictor variables for biogeographic analysis, including satellite imaging and processing of the Earth.<ref name="Watts">{{cite conference|title=The New Biogeography and its Niche in Physical Geography|first=D|last=Watts|conference=Geography Annual Conference|volume=63|number=4|date=November 1978|pages=324–337}}</ref> Two main types of satellite imaging that are important within modern biogeography are Global Production Efficiency Model (GLO-PEM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GLO-PEM uses satellite-imaging gives "repetitive, spatially contiguous, and time specific observations of vegetation". These observations are on a global scale.<ref name="Prince">{{cite journal|first1=Stephen D|last1=Prince|first2=Samuel N|last2=Goward|title=Global Primary Production: A Remote Sensing Approach|journal=Journal of Biogeography|volume=22|number=4/5|series=Terrestrial Ecosystem Interactions with Global Change, Volume 2|date=Jul 1995|pages=815–835|doi=10.2307/2845983 |jstor=2845983 }}</ref> GIS can show certain processes on the earth's surface like whale locations, [[sea surface temperature]]s, and bathymetry.<ref name="NASA">{{cite web |url=http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/rsd/RemoteSensing.html |title=Remote Sensing Data and Information |access-date= |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140427035513/http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/rsd/RemoteSensing.html |archive-date=2014-04-27 }}</ref> Current scientists also use coral reefs to delve into the history of biogeography through the fossilized reefs.{{cn|date=June 2024}}

Two global information systems are either dedicated to, or have strong focus on, biogeography (in the form of the spatial location of observations of organisms), namely the [[Global Biodiversity Information Facility]] (GBIF: 2.57 billion species occurrence records reported as at August 2023)<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.gbif.org/ |title=Global Biodiversity Information Facility |access-date=27 August 2023 }}</ref> and, for marine species only, the [[Ocean Biodiversity Information System]] (OBIS, originally the ''Ocean Biogeographic Information System'': 116 million species occurrence records reported as at August 2023),<ref>{{cite web |url=https://obis.org/ |title=Ocean Biodiversity Information System |access-date=27 August 2023 }}</ref> while at a national scale, similar compilations of species occurrence records also exist such as the U.K. [[National Biodiversity Network]], the [[Atlas of Living Australia]], and many others. In the case of the oceans, in 2017 Costello ''et al.'' analyzed the distribution of 65,000 species of marine animals and plants as then documented in OBIS, and used the results to distinguish 30 distinct marine realms, split between continental-shelf and offshore deep-sea areas.<ref name="Costello_et_al">{{cite journal |last1=Costello |first1=Mark J. |last2=Tsai |first2=Peter |last3=Wong |first3=Pui Shan |last4=Cheung |first4=Alan Kwok Lun  |last5=Basher |first5=Zeenatul |last6=Chaudhary |first6=Chhaya |year=2017 |title=Marine biogeographic realms and species endemicity |journal=Nature Communications |volume=8 |issue=article number 1057 |page= 1057|doi=10.1038/s41467-017-01121-2 |jstor= |pmid=29051522 |pmc=5648874 |bibcode=2017NatCo...8.1057C }}</ref>

Since it is self evident that compilations of species occurrence records cannot cover with any completeness, areas that have received either limited or no sampling, a number of methods have been developed to produce arguably more complete "predictive" or "modelled" distributions for species based on their associated environmental or other preferences (such as availability of food or other habitat requirements); this approach is known as either Environmental niche modelling (ENM) or [[Species distribution modelling]] (SDM). Depending on the reliability of the source data and the nature of the models employed (including the scales for which data are available), maps generated from such models may then provide better representations of the "real" biogeographic distributions of either individual species, groups of species, or [[biodiversity]] as a whole, however it should also be borne in mind that historic or recent human activities (such as [[Whaling|hunting of great whales]], or other human-induced exterminations) may have altered present-day species distributions from their potential "full" ecological footprint. Examples of predictive maps produced by niche modelling methods based on either GBIF (terrestrial) or OBIS (marine, plus some freshwater) data are the former ''Lifemapper'' project at the [[University of Kansas]] (now continued as a part of ''BiotaPhy''<ref name="BiotaPhy">{{cite web |url=https://biotaphy.github.io/ |title=BiotaPhy Project |access-date=27 August 2023 }}</ref>) and [[AquaMaps]], which as at 2023 contain modelled distributions for around 200,000 terrestrial, and 33,000 species of [[teleost]]s, marine mammals and invertebrates, respectively.<ref name="BiotaPhy" /><ref name="AquaMaps">{{cite web |url=https://aquamaps.org/ |title=AquaMaps |access-date=27 August 2023 }}</ref> One advantage of ENM/SDM is that in addition to showing current (or even past) modelled distributions, insertion of changed parameters such as the anticipated effects of [[climate change]] can also be used to show potential changes in species distributions that may occur in the future based on such scenarios.<ref name="Newbold">{{cite journal |last1=Newbold |first1=Tim |year=2018 |title=Future effects of climate and land-use change on terrestrial vertebrate community diversity under different scenarios |journal=  Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences|volume=285 |issue=article number 20180792 |page= |doi=10.1098/rspb.2018.0792 |jstor= |pmid= 29925617|pmc= 6030534}}</ref>