Climate-limited vegetation change in the conterminous United States of America

In the study “CLIMATE-LIMITED VEGETATION CHANGE IN THE CONTERMINOUS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”, published in the Global Change Biology journal, we evaluated the effects of climate conditions on vegetation composition and distribution in the conterminous United States (CONUS). To disentangle the direct effects of climate change from different non-climate factors, we applied \"Liebig's law of the minimum\" in a geospatial context, and determined the climate-limited potential for tree, shrub, herbaceous, and non-vegetation fractional cover change. We then compared these potential rates against observed change rates for the period 1986 to 2018 to identify areas of the CONUS where vegetation change is likely being limited by climatic conditions. This dataset contains the input and the resulting rasters for the study which include a) the observed rates of vegetation change, b) the climate derived potential vegetation rates of change, c) the difference between potential and observed values and d)..., Input data
 
We use the available data from the “Vegetative Lifeform Cover from Landsat SR for CONUS” product (https://daac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/dsviewer.pl?ds_id=1809) to evaluate the changes in vegetation fractional cover.
 
The information for the climate factors was derived from the TerraClimate data catalog (https://www.climatologylab.org/terraclimate.html). We downloaded data from this catalog for the period 1971 to 2018 for the following variables:  minimum temperature (TMIN), precipitation (PPT), actual evapotranspiration (AET), potential evapotranspiration (PET), and climatic water deficit (DEF).
 
Preprocessing of vegetation fractional cover data
 
We resampled and aligned the maps of fractional cover using pixel averaging to the extent and resolution of the TerraClimate dataset (~ 4 km). Then, we calculated rates of lifeform cover change per pixel using the Theil-Sen slope analysis (Sen, 1968; Theil, 1992).
 
Preprocessing of climate variables data
 
To process the climate data, ..., , This README file was generated on 2024-03-04 by Adriana Parra.

## GENERAL INFORMATION

1\. Title of Dataset: **Climate-limited vegetation change in the conterminous United States of America**

2\. Author Information

A. First Author Contact Information

Name: Adriana Parra

Institution: University of Nevada, Reno

Address: Reno, NV USA

Email: [e-mail]

B. Co-author Contact Information

Name: Jonathan Greenberg

Institution: University of Nevada, Reno

Address: Reno, NV USA

Email: [e-mail]

3\. Coverage period of the dataset: 1986-2018

4\. Geographic location of dataset: Conterminous United States

5\. Description:

This dataset contains the input and the resulting rasters for the study “CLIMATE-LIMITED VEGETATION CHANGE IN THE CONTERMINOUS UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”, published in the Global Change Biology journal. The dataset includes a) the observed rates of vegetation change, b) the climate derived potential vegetation rates of change, c) the dif...