Table 4.

Importance values (w+) of environmental predictors of combined rain forest expansion at the five study sites, based on the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). “w+” can be interpreted as the probability of that variable being in the best model. As a “rule of thumb,” values of w+≥0.73 (shown in bold) can be interpreted as clear evidence of an effect (Richards 2005)

Variable	w+
Distance to preexisting rain forest	>0.99
Topographic position index	0.04
Elevation	0.02
Slope	0.02
Geology	0
Distance to drainage	0.02
Aspect	0