Projected future bioclimate-envelope suitability for bird species in South Central USA

This dataset contains the result of the bioclimatic-envelope modeling of nine bird species -- Northern/Masked Bobwhite Quail (Colinus virginianus), Scaled Quail (Callipepla squamata), Pinyon Jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus), Juniper Titmouse (Baeolophus ridgwayi), Mexican Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis lucida), Cassin’s Sparrow (Peucaea cassinii), Lesser Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus), Montezuma Quail (Cyrtonyx montezumae), and White-tailed Ptarmigan (Lagopus leucurus) -- in the South Central US using the downscaled data provided by WorldClim. We used five species distribution models (SDM) including Generalized Linear Model, Random Forest, Boosted Regression Tree, Maxent, and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) and ensembles to develop the present day distributions of the species based on climate-driven models alone. We then projected future distributions of the species using data from four climate models: Community Climate System Model version 4 (CCSM4), Hadley Centre Global Environment Model version 2-Earth System (HadGEM2-ES), Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate version 5 (MIROC5), and Max Planck Institute Earth System Model, low resolution (MPI-ESM-LR). We ran the climate models according to two greenhouse gas concentration pathways (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5). Datasets in this file are the results for models RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 for the years 2050 and 2070. It shows a comparison of ensembles of suitable bioclimatic conditions between present day and future day. The dataset shows areas where ensembles agree and suitable conditions are stable (stable represented in green), future ensemble projects new suitable conditions (gain represented in yellow), present ensemble may be converted to unsuitable in the future (loss represented in red), and areas where conditions are unsuitable in the future (non represented in gray).

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