I received a number of emails suddenly about WhyWhere, and I thought I would answer them all here with an update on progress of the new version. This is my highest priority now, and should be available as beta in a week or so. The old version was too hard to maintain, being built on via a number of student postdocs over many years. The new version will be in R and so have far fewer lines of code. It will also be more more consistent with subscription trends. It will consist of a small block of html code that you cut and paste into your web page. Then, it will (hopefully!) generate a dynamic output of the prediction of the best model so-far as it mines through the database for correlations. So of the questions I have been asked are below.

I was wondering if the dataset used with whywhere includes attributes of river variables. I am speaking about channel width, reach gradient, mean annual flow, etc. I am intersted in modeling potential species distributions in a riverine network. Any insight would be valuable…

The hydro1k data set is included. Alist of variables is at http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/hydro/namerica.html

Biodiversity section is a latest initiative and we want to use desktopGARP. It seems very useful for our research work. We are having problems in running it and understanding the results. We were hoping that if there was a detailed manual that could help us with more understanding of this software.

All questions regarding DesktopGARP should go to the list for the purpose at http://www.cria.org.br/mailman/listinfo/desktopgarp.

I would like to use WhyWhere for predicting coral species distributions. Since I’m not familiar with the software and whether the model can meet my needs, I would like to try the web version first. However, I cannot open the webpage to the web version of WhyWhere. Is the link removed? Where will I be able to get access to WhyWhere web version? Or must I download the window version?

I have unlinked the web server version of WhyWhere as I don’t intend to support it long-term, and will soon have a new server version. The desktop version can be downloaded and works fine. It does however require a few packages to be installed for use by the Perl modules. People have found this a bit of a hurdle.

Do you have a time estimate available for when the WhyWhere version 2.0 portal and FAQ and ToDo List documents will be available? As part of a project for class and as part of my masters work I am investigating the various models available. I am interested in trying the WhyWhere model out for the class project, but want to make sure I’ll have all of the necessary information in time to complete the project. If not everything will be available, I will likely do my class project with Desktop GARP instead.

My best estimate is a week or two. Sorry I can’t be more precise. I have had to move all my stuff onto a new server, but this will be a permanent home from now on. Version 2.0 should be much better and easier to use.

I would like to know if the GARP model is suitable for use on smaller areas (roughly 150 000 ha) and if so, would the pre-processed dataset of North America be usable in this case or would we have to create our own? Also, I’ve noticed that the section in the user’s manual on Climate Change is under construction and I was wondering if there has been any progress or anywhere else I might be able to learn a bit more about the model’s ability to function using climate change scenarios. Lastly, if possible, would you be able to let me know what the 0 of the parameters in the dataset layers for North America represent?

If you are interested in DesktopGARP go to the list above. To work at that scale you would need vegetation data from satellite. I have a few layers, the continuous fields dataset from Uni Maryland that will be available in WhyWhere. Other than that you would need to get your own. Climate change predictions are possible (by saving a model, then reapplying it to shifted variables). I have no shifted variables available in the WhyWhere database however.