Spatial rarefy (SDMToolbox)

[Megan S]

Hi all,

I would like to use the spatial rarefy tool in SDMToolbox to take environmental heterogeneity into account when thinning my samples. The only options for environmental heterogeneity are for climate (which does a PCA first) or using topography (elevation - one dataset). If I know that the environmental variables important for my species are different than those - such as land use, soil type, distance to water bodies, etc., would it be appropriate to put those into the PCA, or pick the most important one and put it in the calculation for one dataset (topography)? I know that PCA can be sensitive to categorical variables such as soil type and land use, but I don't know about the environmental heterogeneity calculation.

Any insight is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Megan