Distribution of White Spruce in Alaska. An Open Access prediction surface from climatic and bioclimatic parameters using ESRI GRID formats.

Falk Huettmann
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:13:17 PDT

This open access data set contains a spatially gridded distribution of White Spruce in Alaska (ESRI GRID format), predicted from climatic and bioclimatic parameters (temperature, precipitation, elevation, and aspect). A species distribution model, developed by Bettina Ohse, was used to determine the ecological niche of the species based on the environmental variables. The model was developed within TreeNet, a classification and regression tree software. The ecological niche was then projected into geographical space, resulting in a predictive map of the species distribution in Alaska (4km resolution, tested accuracy of c. 95 %). We used ArcGIS 9.2. Data sources were freely available for the global public, and so were all tools used (prediction algorithms and specific GIS tools). We promote these data and this concept as a role model how to model plant distributions in wilderness areas and for overcoming data gaps in species distributions world-wide. We encourage the use and update of these data for further updating of this concept and its findings.