ABSTRACT
Predicting the response of bryophytes to future environmental change requires direct field-manipulative experimentation on bryophyte responses to warming, snow-lie, moisture, nutrients. The detailed interpretation of such environmental changes requires information on the relationships between bryophytes and the environment. One reason for attempting to quantify bryophyte-environment relationships is to provide a means of predicting how bryophytes might respond to environmental changes in the future. Developments in applied statistics, in particular generalized linear and generalized additive modelling, permit the quantification of the realized environmental niche of bryophyte species and the examination of the interaction between environmental variables on the occurrence or abundance of species. The generalized linear models/generalized additive models approach is an attempt, admittedly rather crude conceptually but statistically flexible and robust, to quantify what an experienced field bryologist does subconsciously when thinking 'just the place for' a particular species.
