Current and Future Distributions for 198 Tropical and Subtropical Forage Species

198 tropical and subtropical forage species are modeled for current and future climate scenarios. The dataset includes curated occurrence records, species-level presence/absence maps, and species richness layers at a 2.5 arc-minute resolution. Compiled by Hannes Gaisberger of The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, the repository was last updated in July 2026.

Use Cases

• Projecting forage species suitability under future climate scenarios SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0 based on the described environmental predictors.
• Analyzing species richness patterns for tropical and subtropical grasslands based on the provided species richness layers.
• Validating species distribution models using the included model validation tables and spatial block cross-validation methodology.
• Mapping potential forage resource availability within species-specific 500 km accessible-area domains.

Strengths

• Includes distribution models for 198 priority forage species.
• Spatial layers are provided at a 2.5 arc-minute resolution (approximately 5 km at the equator).
• Models incorporate 21 environmental predictors and use a reproducible workflow for data cleaning.
• Provides future projections for two climate scenarios (SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0) across five General Circulation Models.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the compiled global and regional sources.

Provenance

Source

The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT Dataverse

Collection Method

Occurrence records compiled from multiple sources, taxonomically standardized, cleaned, and modeled using Maxent with 21 environmental predictors.

Time Range

Future projections cover the period 2041–2060.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-06 21:10:21; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage for tropical and subtropical regions, restricted to species-specific accessible-area domains.