Data on influence of atmospheric rivers on vegetation productivity and fire patterns in the southwestern US

In the southwestern US, the meteorological phenomenon known as atmospheric rivers (ARs) has gained increasing attention due to its strong connections to floods, snowpacks and water supplies in the West Coast states. Relatively less is known about the ecological implications of ARs, particularly in the interior Southwest, where AR storms are less common. To address this gap, we compared a chronology of AR landfalls on the west coast between 1989-2011 and between 25-42.5N, to annual metrics of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI; an indicator of vegetation productivity) and daily-resolution precipitation data to assess influences of AR-fed winter precipitation on vegetation productivity across the southwestern US. We mapped correlations between winter AR precipitation during landfalling ARs and 1) annual maximum NDVI and 2) area burned by large wildfires summarized by ecoregion during the same year as the landfalls and during the following year. The data produced by this study include four sets of eight raster grids (total = 32 grids) representing Spearman Rank correlation coefficients for four types of comparisons across eight different latitudinal bands. Each dataset is named according to the comparison type and latitude of AR landfall. The four types of comparisons (with corresponding filenames indicated in parentheses) include: 1) annual winter atmospheric river precipitation vs. total annual winter precipitation (AR_WinterPrecip), 2) annual winter atmospheric river precipitation vs. annual maximum NDVI (AR_NDVI), 3) spatially-averaged annual winter atmospheric river precipitation vs. area burned by wildfire during the same year by Level IV ecoregion (AR_Fire_SameYear), and 4) spatially-averaged annual winter atmospheric river precipitation vs. area burned by wildfire with a 1-year lag by Level IV ecoregion (AR_Fire_OneYearLag). The eight landfall latitudes are indicated in filenames as follows: 25N, 27_5N, 30N, 32_5N, 35N, 37_5_N, 40N, 42_5N.