Page 80 - GIS for Science, Volume 3 Preview

MAPPING TREE SPECIES DISTRIBUTIONS
Certain tree species are often found together in forest communities, as seen in the map of forest type groups in southern New England. These tree communities are themselves related to other plant communities (e.g., shrubs and grasses) and wildlife species. These communities may be sensitive to broad scale environmental drivers, such as climate, and local drivers, such as topography and disturbance history. Therefore, understanding local forest community patterns can support landscape planning, but this understanding increasingly depends on the fine-scale mapping of tree species distributions.
Knowing where certain types of forests, composed of differing combinations of tree species, are distributed across the United States is essential information for understanding how forests might respond, for example, to changing climate. These species may all have differing sensitivities to heat, drought, snowfall, disturbance, etc., meaning that forest vulnerability to change could be dependant upon the assemblage of individual tree species within a given forest.
Comparing forest type groups based on MODIS and Landsat.
Map of forest type groups for southern New England highlights the latitudinal transition from forests dominated by oak (orange) to maple (yellow).
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