Western US Forest Carbon and Biodiversity Priority Rankings, 2020-2099

Gridded outputs rank western U.S. forest lands for preservation based on modeled future carbon sequestration potential and vulnerability to drought and wildfire from 2020 to 2099. The dataset also includes co-located species richness data for amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles, including threatened and endangered species, to illustrate habitat suitability. It was produced by ORNL_CLOUD using a modified Community Land Model at 4 km resolution.

Use Cases

• Ranking forest parcels for conservation investment based on carbon sequestration priority scores.
• Assessing habitat suitability for vertebrate species by overlaying species richness layers with forest vulnerability rankings.
• Modeling long-term forest net ecosystem productivity (NEP) under future climate scenarios.
• Identifying areas where carbon preservation priorities align with protecting threatened or endangered species.
• Guiding regional harvest management and climate change mitigation activities with spatially explicit vulnerability data.

Strengths

• Provides an 80-year future projection (2020-2099) for forest carbon dynamics and vulnerability.
• Integrates carbon sequestration modeling with vertebrate species richness data from the USGS GAP Analysis Project.
• Offers separate data layers for all species and for threatened/endangered species subsets.
• Uses a high-resolution (4 km x 4 km) modified Community Land Model (CLM 4.5) for simulations.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and exact file sizes are not provided on any platform.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' date: one source shows a future date (2099-12-31), while another shows 2026-03 13.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Simulations from 2020 to 2099 using a modified version of the Community Land Model (CLM 4.5) at 4 km resolution; species data from the USGS GAP Analysis Project and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listings.

Time Range

2020 to 2099

Freshness

2026-03-13 02:38:52.888004

Geography

Western United States