9-second gridded continental Australia novel ecological environments for Vascular Plants 1990:2050 CanESM2 RCP 8.5 (CMIP5) (GDM: VAS_v5_r11)

Brief description

Novel ecological environments for Vascular Plants as a function of change in long term (30 year average) climates between the present (1990 centred) and projected future (2050 centred) under the CanESM2 model (RCP 8.5) based on Generalised Dissimilarity Modelling (GDM) of compositional turnover.

This metric describes the nature of the projected 2050 centred future environmental conditions for each 9s grid square. Using a Generalised Dissimilarity Model of compositional turnover (the effects of changing environment on changing species), each future location is compared with the continent in the present. For each cell, the metric looks out to all other cells in the continent, and records the ecological similarity of the future state of the cell to the most similar cell in the present. A value of 1 indicates that the future environment is similar to a current location in the present, and perfect analogue can found somewhere in Australia. A value of 0 indicates that the most similar environment to be found in the present is ecologically so different that we would expect no species in common, i.e. there are no current analogues for this environment; it is novel. Intermediate values show how ecologically similar the most similar cell is. However, no weight is given to the proximity of the most similar cell. The environment may be similar, but the cells thousands of kilometres apart.


This metric was developed along with others for use in an assessment of the efficacy of the protected area system for biodiversity under climate change at continental and global scales, presented at the IUCN World Parks Congress 2014. It is described in the AdaptNRM Guide “Implications of Climate Change for Biodiversity: a community-level modelling approach”, available online at: www.adaptnrm.org.

Data are provided in two forms:
1. Zipped ESRI float grids: Binary float grids (*.flt) with associated ESRI header files (*.hdr) and projection files (*.prj). After extracting from the zip archive, these files can be imported into most GIS software packages, and can be used as other binary file formats by substituting the appropriate header file.
2. ArcGIS layer package (*.lpk): These packages contain can be unpacked by ArcGIS as a raster with associated legend.

Additionally a short methods summary is provided in the file 9sMethodsSummary.pdf for further information.

Layers in this 9s series use a consistent naming convention:
BIOLOGICAL GROUP _ FROM BASE_ TO SCENARIO_ ANALYSIS
e.g. A_90_CAN85_S or R_90_MIR85_L
where BIOLOGICAL GROUP is A: Vascular Plants, M: Vascular Plants, R: Vascular Plants and V: vascular plants

Lineage: Novel ecological environments were calculated using the highly parallel bespoke CSIRO Muru software running on a LINUX high-performance-computing cluster, taking GDM model transformed environmental grids as inputs. The ecological similarity of the most similar present cell to the future environment of each cell was calculated. More detail of the calculations and methods are given in the document “9sMethodsSummary.pdf” provided with the data download.
GDM Model: \t
Generalised dissimilarity model of compositional turnover in vascular plant species for continental Australia at 9 second resolution using ANHAT data extracted 4 April 2013 (GDM: VAS_v5_r11)
Climate data. Models were built and projected using:
a) 9-second gridded climatology for continental Australia 1976-2005: Summary variables with elevation and radiative adjustment
b) 9-second gridded climatology for continental Australia 2036-2065 CanESM2 RCP 8.5 (CMIP5): Summary variables with elevation and radiative adjustment