I would like to ask ESRI to consider some tool addition to ArcMap. I find ArcMap very poor in terms of tools intended for the geospatial analysis of biodiversity datasets. As a vetran user of ESRI products mapping analysis of biodiversity I find it coming very shot in this area. As the standard software of the industry it should stand coparable to other recent products such as the biodiversity analyst provided by SperGeo package www.supergeotek.com.
Maxent is very well established algorithm in modeling species distribution ranges over geographical domains. It is also heavily used in assessing the impact of climate change on biodiversity globally. Maxent is relying on using ASCII rasters of environmental conditions of tempratures and rainfall and other topological or derived layers. The fact that user needs to jup across the two packages for raster prepration and actuall modeling makes it tedious for ecologists to perform complicated studies especially for multiple species or multiple geographical regions. If the modeling algorithm is enabled through ArcMAP it would be a great enhance for both users of Maxent and ArcMAP. Users of both packages are wide audience and would really welcome the development. I am not aware of ESRI’S DEVELOPMENT strategies but I think it is a very potential addition
