Refining area of occupancy to address the modifiable areal unit problem in ecology and conservation

The modifiable areal unit problem is prevalent across many aspects of spatial analysis within ecology and conservation. The problem is particularly manifested when calculating metrics for extinction risk estimation, for example, area of occupancy (AOO). Although embedded in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria, AOO is often not used or is poorly applied. We evaluated new and existing methods for calculating AOO from occurrence records and devised a method for determining the minimum AOO with a uniform grid. We evaluated the grid cell shape, origin, and rotation with real-world and simulated data and reviewed the effects on AOO values and possible impacts for species already assessed on the IUCN Red List. The AOO varied by up to 80%, and a ratio of cells to points of 1:1.21 yielded the maximum variation in the number of occupied cells. These findings potentially impact 3% of existing species on the IUCN Red List and species not yet assessed. Our new method combined grid rotation and moving grid origin and gave fast, robust, and reproducible results and, in the majority of cases, achieved the minimum AOO. As well as determining minimum AOO, our method yielded a confidence interval that should be incorporated into existing tools that support species risk assessment. We recommend when recording AOO and other areal measurements that the methods; summary statistics across multiple iterations; angle and origin of the minimum grid; map projection; and datum be recorded, this will lead to more robust species risk assessments.