Data from: Refining Refugia: How local climate and vegetation shape Boreal Songbird persistence

Abstract As climate change accelerates shifts in species distributions, identifying areas of climatic stability—or refugia—has become a critical strategy for biodiversity conservation. In forested ecosystems, the interaction between local climate conditions and vegetation structure can mediate species responses to environmental change, yet many broad-scale models overlook this complexity. This study investigates how topographically downscaled climate—accounting for local variation in temperature and moisture—affects the predicted distribution and climate-change refugia of forest-associated songbirds in Alberta, Canada. Specifically, we Quantify how adjusted versus unadjusted climate shifts the relative importance of climate and vegetation predictors in boosted‐regression‐tree models for 48 forest songbird species; Compare model explanatory power and distribution projections under climate‐only and climate + vegetation scenarios; Map climate‐change refugia under SSP3-7.0 (2071–2100) for three nesting‐habitat groups (coniferous, deciduous, wetland) using a 13-GCM ensemble. Model performance improved for 19 species in full models and 15 in climate-only models, with coniferous‐associated species showing the greatest sensitivity to microclimatic adjustment (48 % gain in pseudo-R²). Refugia area estimates diverged dramatically: coniferous species lost 58 % of habitat under unadjusted climate but only 21 % when adjusted; deciduous species consistently gained refugia; wetland species were largely unaffected by downscaling. Spatial refugia “hotspots” occurred in central river valleys for deciduous, foothills for coniferous, and northern lowlands for wetland birds. Fine-scale climate adjustment refines our understanding of species‐specific vulnerability and persistence, improving refugia identification for targeted conservation. These data support reuse in ecological modeling, conservation planning, and meta-analyses of climate sensitivity.