Maps of post-fire conifer recruitment from: Fire-catalyzed vegetation shifts in ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir forests of the western United States

This dataset includes spatial projections of the post-fire recruitment index for ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) using climate data from different time periods (1980-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2014) and a future climate scenario of a global mean increase in temperature of two degrees Celsius. The post-fire recruitment index varies from 0 to 1 and represents the proportion of the first five years following wildfire that had climate suitable for regeneration of the given species. We chose a five-year window because the majority (69%) of recruitment across all sites in the dataset used to build our recruitment models occurred within the first five post-fire years. In the projections, climate and time since fire varies by year but other predictors stay constant at fixed values. Distance to seed source was set at 50 m and fire severity, measured as the differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR), was set at 400 for all projections. Because we hold distance to seed source and fire severity constant, the post-fire recruitment index is interpreted as the climate suitability for post-fire recruitment, under the given scenario. We recognize that post-fire recruitment is also influenced by other local factors that are unaccounted for in our models, including biotic interactions, such as herbivory and competition, and abiotic factors, such as substrate, topography and soil moisture.