Acta Herpetologica 7(2): 221-237, 2012 The significance of using satellite imagery data only in Ecological Niche Modelling of Iberian herps Neftalí Sillero1, José C. Brito2, Santiago Martín-Alfageme3, Eduardo García- Meléndez4, A.G. Toxopeus5, Andrew Skidmore5 1 Centro de Investigação em Ciências Geo-Espaciais (CICGE), Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Ciências, Rua do Campo Alegre, 687, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal. Corresponding author. E-mail: neftali.
[email protected] 2 CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos da Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, Rua Padre Armando Quintas, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal 3 Servicio Transfronterizo de Información Geografica, Universidad de Salamanca, C.M. San Bartolome, Pz. Fray Luis de León 1-8, 37008 Salamanca, Spain 4 Área de Geodinámica Externa, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas y Ambientales, Universidad de León, Campus de Vegazana s/n, 24071, León, Spain 5 ITC, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente, Hengeloses- traat 99, 7514 AE Enschede, The Netherlands Submitted on: 2011, 24th October; revised on: 2012, 20th March; accepted on: 2012, 11th April. Abstract. The environmental data used to calculate ecological niche models (ENM) are obtained mainly from ground-based maps (e.g., climatic interpolated surfaces). These data are often not available for less developed areas, or may be at an inappro- priate scale, and thus to obtain this information requires fieldwork. An alternative source of eco-geographical data comes from satellite imagery. Three sets of ENM were calculated exclusively with variables obtained (1) from optical and radar images only and (2) from climatic and altitude maps obtained by ground-based methods.