• DOI:10.1089/ast.2020.2342
• Corpus ID: 236986920

Habitability Models for Astrobiology.

@article{Mendez2021HabitabilityMF,
  title={Habitability Models for Astrobiology.},
  author={Abel M'endez and Edgard E. Rivera-Valent'in and Dirk Schulze‐Makuch and Justin Filiberto and Ramses M. Ram'irez and Tana E. Wood and Alfonso D'avila and Chris McKay and Kevin Ortiz Ceballos and Marcos Jusino-Maldonado and Nicole J. Torres-Santiago and Guillermo Nery and Ren{\'e} Heller and Paul K. Byrne and Michael J. Malaska and Erica Nathan and Marta Filipa Sim{\~o}es and and Oct{\'a}vio A. C. Antunes and Jes'us Mart'inez-Fr'ias and Ludmila Carone and Noam R. Izenberg and Dimitra Atri and Humberto I. Carvajal Chitty and Priscilla Nowajewski-Barra and Frances Rivera-Hern'andez and Corine Meredith Brown and Kennda L. Lynch and David C. Catling and Jorge I. Zuluaga and Juan Fernando Salazar and Howard Chen and Grizelle Gonz'alez and Madhu Kashyap Jagadeesh and Jacob Haqq‐Misra},
  journal={Astrobiology},
  year={2021}
}

• Abel M'endez, Edgard E. Rivera-Valent'in, +31 authors J. Haqq‐Misra
• Published 1 August 2021
• Geology, Physics, Environmental Science
• Astrobiology

Habitability has been generally defined as the capability of an environment to support life. Ecologists have been using Habitat Suitability Models (HSMs) for more than four decades to study the habitability of Earth from local to global scales. Astrobiologists have been proposing different habitability models for some time, with little integration and consistency among them, being different in function to those used by ecologists. Habitability models are not only used to determine whether environments are habitable, but they also are used to characterize what key factors are responsible for the gradual transition from low to high habitability states. Here we review and compare some of the different models used by ecologists and astrobiologists and suggest how they could be integrated into new habitability standards. Such standards will help improve the comparison and characterization of potentially habitable environments, prioritize target selections, and study correlations between habitability and biosignatures. Habitability models are the foundation of planetary habitability science, and the synergy between ecologists and astrobiologists is necessary to expand our understanding of the habitability of Earth, the Solar System, and extrasolar planets.