TreeGOER

TreeGOER provides environmental range summaries for approximately 48,129 tree species by extracting species distribution modeling outputs from over 44 million occurrence records across 38 bioclimatic variables, eight soil characteristics, and three topographic features to support biogeographical and climate-related analyses.

Key Features:

• Environmental range data: Species-level summaries cover 38 bioclimatic variables, eight soil characteristics, and three topographic features.
• Species coverage: Approximately 48,129 tree species are included in the database.
• Occurrence records: Range estimates derive from species distribution modeling analyses of over 44 million occurrence records.
• Quantile statistics: The database reports statistical estimates including 5% and 95% quantiles for environmental variables.
• Outlier detection: Multiple methods of outlier detection are applied to improve range estimates.
• Data cleaning and taxonomic standardization: Occurrence data are cleaned and taxonomically standardized prior to analysis.
• Observation coverage metric: About 45% of species have range estimates based on 20 or more observation records.
• Computational integration: Data are prepared for analysis and integration with the R programming language.

Scientific Applications:

• Biogeographical research: Facilitates study of global tree diversity patterns and core bioclimatic ranges along temperature and moisture gradients, including high diversity in moist tropical forests and regional patterns such as Africa's "odd man out" phenomenon.
• Climate change studies: Provides preliminary estimates of suitable environmental conditions for tree species to inform vulnerability and distributional change assessments under climate change scenarios.
• Latitudinal trend analyses: Supports investigations of latitudinal trends in tree vulnerability, including comparisons with findings from urban tree studies.
• Tropical region analyses: Enables examination of longitudinal trends and moisture index patterns in tropical areas to assess environmental influences on species distributions.

Methodology:

Methods explicitly stated include species distribution modeling analyses of >44 million occurrence records, data cleaning and taxonomic standardization, application of multiple outlier-detection methods, and calculation of 5% and 95% quantiles for environmental variables.