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Pinyon-juniper basal area, climate and demographics data from National Forest Inventory plots and projected under future density and climate conditions

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

These data were compiled to help understand how climate change may impact dryland pinyon-juniper ecosystems in coming decades, and how resource management might be able to minimize those impacts. Objective(s) of our study were to model the demographic rates of PJ woodlands to estimate the areas that may decline in the future vs. those that will be stable. We quantified populations growth rates across broad geographic areas, and identified the relative roles of recruitment and mortality in driving potential future changes in population viability in 5 tree species that are major components of these dry forests. We used this demographic model to project pinyon-juniper population stability under future climate conditions, assess how robust these projected changes are, and to identify where on the landscape management strategies that decrease tree competition would effectively resist population decline. These data represent estimated recruitment, mortality and population growth across the distribution of five common pinyon-juniper species across the US Southwest. These data were collected by the US Forest service in their monitoring program, which is a systematic survey of forested regions across the entire US. Our data is from western US states, including AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NM, ND, NV, OR, SD, TX, UT, and was collected between 2000-2007, depending on state census collection times. These data were collected by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program of the USDA US Forest Service. Within each established plot, all adult trees greater than 12.7 cm (5 in.) diameter at breast height (DBH) are assigned unique tags and tracked within four, 7.32 m (24 ft.) radius subplots. All saplings <12.7 cm & > 2.54 cm (1 in.) DBH are assigned unique tags and tracked within four, 2.07 m (6.8 ft.) radius microplots within the larger adult plots. Finally, seedlings <2.54 cm DBH are counted within the same microplots as the saplings. Two censuses were conducted 10 years apart in each plot. These data can be used to inform how tree species have unique responses to changing climate conditions and how management actions, like tree density reduction, may effectively resist transformation away from pinyon-juniper woodland to other ecosystem types.

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 July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/d241951f06aeea53b1733b84c7f83d54
Identifier USGS:627190ded34e76103cd58701
Data Last Modified 20230130
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
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 206f6466-4dbe-4724-adac-e30c531ebde1
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -120.016365,32.268535,-100.969157,48.269844
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 4dcf106667f0eb7c76be8c9b6ccd6b2bbccae96775eaf945e7089cdeabc4f79c
Source Schema Version 1.1
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