Estimated Current and Future Community Suitability of Pinyon and Juniper Woodlands for 3 Emissions Scenario Pathways (SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, SSP5-8.5) and Bivariate Comparisons Across Western North America

These data consist of gridded projected pinyon-juniper community-level suitability values across western North America. The objectives of our study were to estimate community-level suitability for pinyon-juniper woodlands under current and future climate conditions and compare geographic patterns in suitability against additional management considerations, such as burn probability and locations of mature and old-growth forest type. The community-level data were created from individual pinyon-juniper species projections in Noel et al. (2024), and compared against burn probability estimates from Dillon et al. (2023), and mature and old-growth forest types surveyed by the U.S. Forest Service (Woodall et al. 2023; Pelz et al. 2023). These data can be used to understand how community-level suitability may change under future climate conditions, and to relate these potential changes to burn probability and mature and old-growth forest type locations. These data are contained in two cloud-optimized geotiff files (one for numeric and one for categorical data layers) and were processed in R, a statistical computing software.