[R-sig-eco] Boosted regression trees

twilding twilding at simla.colostate.edu
Wed Apr 16 19:55:11 CEST 2008


This paper came out recently - a guide to boosted regression trees for 
ecologists. Great potential for modelling species distributions from 
environmental data I think.

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01390.x

Well written (even I can understand it) and code for R is given with 
tutorials. Example for freshwater fish given. The method's non-linear. It 
doesn't produce nice smooth curves, but that seems to be it's strength as no 
prior assumptions are made about how the species should respond. I haven't 
tried it yet. Interested to hear what sort of results people get.

Thomas Wilding
Department of Biology
Colorado State University
Fort Collins
Colorado 80523-1878
USA
(+1 970) 491 2414



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