This dataset portrays the viability score (scale of 0 - 1.0) for Noble
fir (Abies procera) in western North America in 2060, using the Met
Office Hadley Centre (UK) general circulation model (GCM) and
A2 emission scenario (high emissions, regionally diverse
world, rapid growth) to model future climate.
(From Crookston et al. 2010): To develop the climate profile, we
used a data from permanent sample plots largely from Forest
Inventory and Analysis (FIA, Bechtold and Patterson, 2005) but
supplemented with research plot data to provide about 117,000
observations (see Rehfeldt et al., 2006, 2009) describing the
presence and absence of numerous species. The Random Forests
classification tree of Breiman (2001), implemented in R by Liaw
and Wiener (2002), was then used to predict the presence or
absence of species from climate variables. The Random Forests
algorithm outputs statistics (i.e., vote counts) that reflect
the likelihood (proportion of the total votes cast) that the
climate at a location would be suitable for a species. We
interpret this likelihood as a viability score: values near
zero indicate a low suitability while those near 1.0 indicate a
suitability so high that the species is nearly always present
in that climate.