The USDA Forest Service Forest Ecosystem Tree Atlas (Tree Atlas) provides information on the current habitat suitability for most tree species in the eastern United States and predicts how forest habitats may be affected in the future by a changing climate. Use the Tree Atlas online tool to browse information for tree species or to download custom summaries based on location.
View the Tree Atlas (external link)
What is the Tree Atlas?
The Tree Atlas (Version 4) can help to answer a range of questions concerning current and projected suitable habitat for the majority (148) of tree species within eastern U.S. forests.
For each tree species included in the Atlas, information is provided on the unique characteristics, life history, and current distribution of each species. Users can see which factors (e.g. temperature, elevation, soil properties) help to drive species distributions, offering some guidance on species sensitivity to large-scale climate differences. The Tree Atlas offers maps and numerical summary data that show how each species' suitable habitat is projected to change under three different climate models, for both high and low emissions scenarios. Additionally, for some species, maps depicting the colonization likelihood of potential suitable habitat are provided. Maps and geospatial data are available through the Tree Atlas online interface (external link).
For certain pre-defined geographic areas, the Tree Atlas provides summary data on how the suitable habitats for species within that area might change under future climates. Currently, projections are provided for Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) ecosystem vulnerability assessment and synthesis (EVAS) regions, ecoregions (ECOMAP 2007), Forest Service regions, National Forests and Grasslands, National Parks, National Climate Assessment regions (2016), one-degree grids, states, urban areas, and watersheds.
Visit the Forest Ecosystem Atlas Tutorial page (external link) for more information about the underlying models used to predict habitat suitability: