TreeGOER Global Climate Zone Distributions: Observations for 48,129 tree species across 11 Global Climate Zones Derived via the Mean Annual Biotemperature and the Inverted Aridity Index.

TreeGOER (Tree Globally Observed Environmental Ranges) is a database that documents the environmental ranges (minimum, maximum, median, mean and 5%, 25%, 75% and 95% quantiles) for 48,129 tree species and for 51 environmental variables, including 38 bioclimatic variables, 8 soil variables and 3 topographic variables. TreeGOER is available from the following Zenodo archives: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7922927. The TreeGOER ranges were calculated after cleaning occurrence records and standardizing species names with the WorldFlora R package to World Flora Online or the World Checklist of Vascular Plants for a global GBIF occurrence download of 44,267,164 occurrences (GBIF.org 2021 GBIF Occurrence Download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.77gcvq). The process of compilation of TreeGOER with 30 arc-seconds global grid layers, two examples of BIOCLIM applications that investigated the effects of climate change on global tree diversity patterns and R scripts to repeat these analyses have been described by Kindt, R. (2023). TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species. Global Change Biology 29: 6303–6318. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16914. This Zenodo archive documents the occurrence of the same previously compiled and cleaned observations for the TreeGOER across global raster layers that document the distribution of Global Climate Zones. A new global and dynamic climate classification system was recently proposed by Philip Audebert and colleagues (Audebert et al. 2026). Following their decision framework, a geospatial database was developed at 30 arc-seconds resolution and archived on Zenodo (Kindt 2026). Two versions of global climate zones were created, following different calculations of the Potential Evapotranspiration: Potential Evapotranspiration (ET0) obtained from the Global Aridity Index and Potential Evapotranspiration (ET0) Database (GAIPED; Zomer et al. 2022; version 3.1 from 2025). To create this database, the FAO Penman-Monteith Reference Evapotranspiration equations were used. Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) calculated via the envirem package (Title and Bemmels 2018). Envirem applies the modified Hargreaves-Thornton equations that were used to generate version 1.0 of GAIPED. Other variables used to differentiate zones were obtained via annual precipitation data (bioclimatic variable BIO12) and the maximum and minimum monthly temperatures available from WorldClim 2.1 and representing the historical climate from 1970 to 2000 (Fick & Hijmans 2017 ; https://www.worldclim.org/data/worldclim21.html). Following zones are distinguished: Code Code2 Zone Biotemperature (BIOT) Inverse Aridity 11 G11 Polar BIOT <= 1.5 °C - 21 G21 Subpolar 1.5 °C < BIOT <= 3 °C - 31 G31 Boreal Dry 3 °C < BIOT <= 6 °C R >= P/250 32 G32 Boreal Moist 3 °C < BIOT <= 6 °C R < P/250 41 G41 Cool Temperate Dry 6 °C < BIOT <= 12 °C R >= P/500 42 G42 Cool Temperate Moist 6 °C < BIOT <= 12 °C R < P/500 51 G51 Warm Temperate Dry 12 °C < BIOT <= 24 °C R >= P/1000 52 G52 Warm Temperate Moist 12 °C < BIOT <= 24 °C R < P/1000 61 G61 Tropical Dry BIOT > 24 R >= P/500 62 G62 Tropical Moist BIOT > 24 P/2000 <= R < P/500 63 G63 Tropical Wet BIOT > 24 R < P/2000 For each of the 48,129 tree species, the distribution is given for: Envirem: the number of observations in global climate zones derived via Envirem GAIPED: the number of observations in global climate zones derived via GAIPED Static: the number of observations that are in the same zone as derived via Envirem and GAIPED The zone of G-1 shows the number of observations where the zone could not be detected. The zone of G0 shows the number of observations where there was disagreement in the zonation. The calculations were done via the terra package (Hijmans 2025, version 1.8-70) in the R 4.5.1 environment. References Philip Audebert, Eleanor Milne, Laure Sophie Schiettecatte et al. 2026, Aligning climate zoning to ecological zoning: A harmonized classification approach, 07 April 2026, PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8843420/v1 Zomer, R.J.; Xu, J.; Trabucco, A. 2022. Version 3 of the Global Aridity Index and Potential Evapotranspiration Database. Scientific Data 9, 409. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01493-1 Title, P. O., & Bemmels, J. B. (2018). ENVIREM: An expanded set of bioclimatic and topographic variables increases flexibility and improves performance of ecological niche modeling. Ecography, 41(2), 291–307. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.02880 Fick, S. E., & Hijmans, R. J. (2017). WorldClim 2: New 1‐km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 37(12), 4302–4315. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086 Hijmans, R. (2025). terra: Spatial Data Analysis. R package version 1.8-70, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=terra .Kindt, R. (2026). TreeGOER Biotemperature Zone Distributions: Observations for 48,129 tree species across 6 Global Holdridge Biotemperature Zones based on Monthly Temperature Data for 1970-2000 (Version 2026.08) [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21859869 Kindt, R. (2026). Global Climate Zones (1970 - 2000) Derived via the Mean Annual Biotemperature and the Inverted Aridity Index: global raster layers and maps at 30 arc-second resolution. (Version version 2026.08) [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21901225 The development of this archive was supported by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ethiopia to the Provision of Adequate Tree Seed Portfolio project in Ethiopia, by the Green Climate Fund through the IUCN-led Transforming the Eastern Province of Rwanda through Adaptation project and through the Readiness proposal on Climate Appropriate Portfolios of Tree Diversity for Burkina Faso, by the Bezos Earth Fund to the Bezos Quality Tree Seed for Africa in Kenya and Rwanda project and by the German International Climate Initiative (IKI) to the regional tree seed programme on The Right Tree for the Right Place for the Right Purpose in Africa.