This dataset represents actual and predicted suitable habitat for
Taxodium distichum (baldcypress, species code 221) in the Eastern United
States as measured by importance value based on data obtained from the
Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) project, current climate conditions,
and future climate projections. This summary unit of this dataset is a
20 by 20 kilometer cell. The actual importance value (IV) was
calculated based on the number of stems and basal area of a given tree
species relative to other tree species on a plot using about 100,000 FIA
plots (representing nearly 3 million tree records) in the 37 states
within the United States east of the 100th meridian. These importance
values were summarized to 20 by 20 kilometer grid cells. Current
estimates of IV were obtained from regression tree and regression tree
ensemble (using Random Forests) classifiers using 38 environmental
variables including measures of current climate conditions. Predictions
based on future climate were obtained from applying these classifiers to
the environmental variables including projections of future climate
conditions derived from the downscaled output of selected general
circulation models (HADCM3, PCM, and GFDL) for both low (B1) and high
(A1F1) emissions scenarios. The reliability of the predictions for
this species is Medium. For more information about this dataset, please
see the Climate Change Tree Atlas web page: http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/atlas/tree/tree_atlas.html
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