Simulated rangewide big sagebrush regeneration estimates and relationships with abiotic variables as function of soils under historical and future climate projections

These NetCDF data were compiled to investigate how two complementary models can contribute to our understanding of contemporary and future big sagebrush regeneration across the historical and potential future sagebrush region. Objective of our study was to apply both models to address three specific objectives: (i) examine the geographic patterns of big sagebrush regeneration probabilities that the two different models project under historical conditions and future climate scenarios; (ii) quantify the robustness of model projections, e.g., the consistency among climate models in projected changes in regeneration for future time periods; and (iii) identify how model predictions for regeneration potential relate to environmental site characteristics like climate, soil moisture, and soils. Big sagebrush regeneration was modeled based on daily meteorological and ecohydrological variables across the historical and potential future geographic range of big sagebrush distribution in the western United States.

These data represent the simulated potential of big sagebrush regeneration representing (i) range-wide big sagebrush regeneration responses in natural vegetation (process-based model, Schlaepfer et al. 2014) and (ii) big sagebrush restoration seeding outcomes following fire in the Great Basin and the Snake River Plains (regression-based model, Shriver et al. 2018) as well as soil moisture and climatic variables for recent climate 1980-2010, and for future projected climate represented by all available climate models under two representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) at two time periods during the 21st century (2020-2050 and 2070-2099) at 10-km resolution based on a simulation experiment described in Bradford et al. 2019 using the SOILWAT2 ecosystem water balance model (Schlaepfer et al. 2021). These data were created by a collaborative research project between the U.S. Geological Survey and Yale University.