2026-07-21T12:28:51Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:23848 2025-11-12T13:20:31Z ddc:004 open_access

Search Space Reduction Using Species Distribution Modeling with Simulated Pollen Signatures Wang, Haoyu Miller, Jennifer A. Jha, Shalene geoforensics species distribution modeling search space reduction Microscopic trace materials, such as pollen, are an important category of forensic evidence recovered during investigations. As an environmentally ubiquitous substance that can attach to various surfaces, pollen enables the linking of objects and people in space and time. In this study, we assessed the extent to which the search space could be reduced using simulated pollen signatures. These signatures were compiled by randomly selecting pairs of geographic coordinates on the Earth’s terrestrial land and querying the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) database to identify plant taxa within 50 meters of the coordinates. These taxa were then treated as the parent taxa of the pollen, simulating the hypothetical attachment of pollen signatures to objects or individuals. For each identified pollen taxon, we modeled habitat suitability for the parent plant taxa and combined the spatial distributions to refine the geolocation search area. Since the actual coordinates for these locations of interest were known, we were able to evaluate the global performance of the search space reduction under the assumption of an extreme constraint that no other contextual information was available. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Haoyu Wang and Jennifer A. Miller and Shalene Jha 2025 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 346, 13th International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2025) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.GIScience.2025.19 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238485 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.GIScience.2025.19 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode