Occurrence records and vegetation type data used for species distribution models in the western United States

Publication Date

2018-08-09

Time Period

2018

Copeland, S., 2018, Occurrence records and vegetation type data used for species distribution models in the western United States: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P99NEI4E.

Type: Related Primary Publication

The purpose of these data are to provide baseline data for a modeling effort for the effects of facilitative interactions, land-use barriers, and loss of long-distance dispersal from animals on species distribution with future climate change. The point occurrence records were used as presence locations for the species distribution models (MaxEnt). The raster layers are lower resolution (900 m) versions of higher resolution (30 m) vegetation layers used to select locations for pseudo-absences within 100 km of the presence locations in models. The raster layers were also used to estimate the initial distribution characteristics such as area occupied and range size used for comparison with projected distributions with climate change. Since some of the vegetation layers where the species was described as co-dominant extended beyond the species accepted geographic range, we truncated the vegetation layer raster to areas within a 100 km buffer of the occurrence records for that species and then used the result as map of initial distribution (see Figure 1 in the Larger Work Citation).

• USGS Data Release Products
• USGS Southwest Biological Science Center (SBSC)