Species distribution modelling tools and databases to assist managing forests under climate change

This paper examines progress made with species distribution modelling (SDM) for trees under climate change. Following brief background information, the main focus is on developments in the last five years. Correlative SDMs have become the most commonly used approach for analysing potential climate change impacts on areas suitable for particular species. The use of SDMs has been criticized, but responses to these criticisms are provided and limitations may not be as great as has been suggested. For many species SDMs are the only potential source of data for learning about likely climate change impacts, and suitable occurrence data for SDM analyses exist for about 50 000 tree species. SDM papers have already been published presenting analyses for more than 1000 tree species under projected climate change. Most SDM climate change analyses adopt an 'equilibrium assumption' that tree species natural distributions provide a reliable estimate of their climatic requirements. However, in addition to natural distribution data, data from trials outside their natural distributions are desirable to determine their intrinsic climatic adaptability. Progress is described in relation to climatic data, soil data, species distribution data, species and provenance trial data, descriptions of species climatic requirements, mapping of suitable areas and integration of species and environmental data. Desirable future objectives are identified for each of these topics.