Title:

DISTRIB-II: forest types of eastern United States and potential departure under climate change

Author(s):

Peters, Matthew P.; Matthews, Stephen N.; Prasad, Anantha M.; Iverson, Louis R.

Publication Year:

2024

How to Cite:

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Peters, Matthew P.; Matthews, Stephen N.; Prasad, Anantha M.; Iverson, Louis R. 2024. DISTRIB-II: forest types of eastern United States and potential departure under climate change. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2024-0044

Abstract:

Modeled habitat suitability for 104 eastern United States trees species under 1981-2010 climate conditions and projected future conditions (2070-2099) were created using a statistical modeling approach that correlates mean importance values (e.g., relative abundance) to environmental data such as climate, elevation, and soil. The importance values were used to train a latent Dirichlet allocation model to define 11 forest types. Swapping 30-year mean climate conditions for a baseline period (1981-2010) with projections for the future (2070-2099) results in potential suitable habitat representing a species potential abundance and was used to estimate possible departures in the current forest type communities. Downscaled future climate projections were obtained from the NASA Earth Exchange Downscaled Climate Projections (NEX-DCP30) program. Output from three general circulation models (GCM) were used to explore possible changes in habitat suitability resulting from climate change and included the NCAR Community Climate System Model (CCSM4), NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Coupled Model 3 (GFDL CM3), and Met Office Hadley Global Environment Model 2 - Earth System (HadGEM2 - ES). Projections under the representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 were used to encapsulate the range of plausible increases in greenhouse gases during this century. The resulting vector digital data include climate information, dominant forest type, summed importance value of dominant forest type species community, and summed importance value of other potential species.

Keywords:

climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere; Climate change; Climatology; forest type; tree communities; modeled niche; potential suitable habitat; tree species; importance value; DISTRIB-II; Climate Change Atlas; eastern United States; Alabama; Arkansas; Connecticut; Delaware; District of Columbia; Florida; Georgia; Illinois; Indiana; Iowa; Kansas; Kentucky; Louisiana; Maine; Maryland; Massachusetts; Michigan; Minnesota; Mississippi; Missouri; Nebraska; New Hampshire; New Jersey; New York; North Carolina; North Dakota; Ohio; Oklahoma; Pennsylvania; Rhode Island; South Carolina; South Dakota; Tennessee; Texas; Vermont; Virginia; West Virginia; Wisconsin

Related publications:

• Iverson, Louis R.; Prasad, Anantha M.; Matthews, Stephen N.; Peters, Matthew P. 2008. Estimating potential habitat for 134 eastern US tree species under six climate scenarios. Forest Ecology and Management. 254(3): 390-406. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2007.07.023 https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/13412
• Peters, Matthew P.; Iverson, Louis R.; Prasad, Anantha M.; Matthews, Stephen N. 2019. Utilizing the density of inventory samples to define a hybrid lattice for species distribution models: DISTRIB-II for 135 eastern U.S. trees. Ecology and Evolution. 9(15): 8876-8899. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5445 https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/58353
• Peters, Matthew P.; Iverson, Louis R.; Prasad, Anantha M.; Matthews, Stephen N. 2019. DISTRIB-II: habitat suitability of eastern United States trees. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2019-0029
• More (5 total)

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