Predicting Suitable Habitat for Stiff Yellow Flax in Eastern Georgian Bay: A MaxEnt and Random Forest Approach

Stiff Yellow Flax (Linum medium var. medium) is a vulnerable shoreline perennial plant found exclusively in Eastern Georgian Bay (EGB), Ontario, a restricted range that, combined with its small population size, leaves it poorly understood and in need of targeted conservation action.

This study mapped habitat suitability for Stiff Yellow Flax across EGB using Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) and Random Forest (RF) models, identifying both suitable and unsuitable habitat and the environmental factors driving its distribution. Both models demonstrated high predictive accuracy, with RF achieving an Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.936 and True Skill Statistic (TSS) of 0.753, and MaxEnt achieving an AUC of 0.899 and TSS of 0.723.