Group Name: ClimaTree

The ClimaTree project is a Masters in Environmental Data Science capstone project at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management (UCSB)

Faculty Advisor and Client: Dr. Joan Dudney

The team consists of Rosemary Juarez, Briana Barajas, Fletcher McConnell and Vanessa Salgado.

A link to our dashboard: ClimaTree Dashboard

Primary Contributor / Client: Dr. Joan Dudney

Other Contributors: Dr. Robert Heilmeyer, Dr. Frances C. Moore

Forests cover approximately 30% of Earth’s land surface, absorb more carbon than all other terrestrial ecosystems, and provide trillions of dollars’ worth of ecosystem services. However, these crucial ecosystems are becoming increasingly vulnerable to a changing te. Though many studies document higher drought sensitivity in drier regions, some studies suggest trees may be even more drought sensitive in wet regions. To reconcile these contradictory results, this capstone project conducted a species-level sensitivity analysis to test whether there is strong variation in tree vulnerability to climate change across species’ ranges. Specifically, the capstone team used spatial analysis to map and assess the sensitivity of the 26 most dominant tree species in the International Tree-Ring Databank. The species-specific maps displayed tree sensitivity to declines in water availability (using climatic water deficit). They developed a shiny app that combined this information on an easily accessible and user-friendly platform. These deliverables will help public and private stakeholders identify species and regions of highest risk so that they can develop the most effective conservation and management strategies.

The objective of this project is to generate species-level sensitivity maps for most sampled (ITRDB) and threatened tree species that capture exposure and sensitivity to illustrate spatial variation in response to climate change. This project utilized processed versions of these data sets, provided by the client Dr. Joan Dudney. The processed data is not yet available publicly, as it is being used in ongoing research. For more information on the processing of the initial data, please contact Dr. Joan Dudney.

Project Goals:

• Design a new workflow from a global to species level analysist to analyze sensitivity of trees to decreased water availability 🗺️
• Create accurate risk maps for vulnerable species of trees 🌎
• Develop an interactive dashboard using R-Shiny app that summarizes our findings on an easily accessible and user-friendly platform 💻

climatree-mapping-repo

contains project scripts to process and calculate sensitivity. For more information, visit our repo's README.md.

Climatree-shiny-dev

contains dashboard scripts needed to run our outputs: mapping sensitivity. For more information, visit our repo's README.md.

your-organization/
├── climatree-mapping-repo
│   ├── main.R
│   ├── 1_climate_niche.R
│   ├── 2_plot_level_regressions.R
│   ├── 3_run_regressions.R
│   ├── 4_sens_predictions.R
│   ├── 5_mapping.R
│   └── create_top_species.R
└── climatree-shiny-dev
   ├── global.R
   ├── server.R
   └── ui.R