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North American vegetation model data for land-use planning in a changing climate:

Metadata Updated: June 15, 2024

Data points intensively sampling 46 North American biomes were used to predict the geographic distribution of biomes from climate variables using the Random Forests classification tree. Techniques were incorporated to accommodate a large number of classes and to predict the future occurrence of climates beyond the contemporary climatic range of the biomes. Errors of prediction from the statistical model averaged 3.7%, but for individual biomes, ranged from 0% to 21.5%. In validating the ability of the model to identify climates without analogs, 78% of 1528 locations outside North America and 81% of land area of the Caribbean Islands were predicted to have no analogs among the 46 biomes. Biome climates were projected into the future according to low and high greenhouse gas emission scenarios of three General Circulation Models for three periods, the decades surrounding 2030, 2060, and 2090. Prominent in the projections were (1) expansion of climates suitable for the tropical dry deciduous forests of Mexico, (2) expansion of climates typifying desertscrub biomes of western USA and northern Mexico, (3) stability of climates typifying the evergreen–deciduous forests of eastern USA, and (4) northward expansion of climates suited to temperate forests, Great Plains grasslands, and montane forests to the detriment of taiga and tundra climates. Maps indicating either poor agreement among projections or climates without contemporary analogs identify geographic areas where land management programs would be most equivocal. Concentrating efforts and resources where projections are more certain can assure land managers a greater likelihood of success.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date June 15, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date June 15, 2024
Publisher Climate Adaptation Science Centers
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/ee9ebd3d35438ebfbe38d64ef73b69f8
Identifier adf581c1-8040-4447-9eb0-4dc466e29f0c
Data Last Modified 2016-04-01
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 0acab4a2-7ed0-4fbf-8e6a-588d17c950c5
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -125.5,46.5,-114.0,53.0
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 597e616038f4752a04b6de666f945b59c049dae0736b185de28cca3e91ecb37f
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -125.5, 46.5, -125.5, 53.0, -114.0, 53.0, -114.0, 46.5, -125.5, 46.5}

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