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Forest Ecosystem Atlas

Release Date

March 1, 2026

The Forest Ecosystem Atlas presents current and potential future habitat suitability for 125 eastern tree species and will soon contain updated models for forest bird species. This interactive atlas can help forest managers working east of 100°W longitude make informed decisions to support sustainable management of timber production and wildlife habitat; this tool replaces the Climate Change Tree Atlas and Climate Change Bird Atlas. Models for tree species were updated in 2019, and efforts have been underway to develop new models for forest bird species that incorporate information from the tree models.

USDA Forest Service Forest Ecosystem Atlas screenshot

Click here to access the tool

Key Uses

Ecosystems

Scale

Landscape

User Experience Level

Beginner

Online Resources

Click here to access the Forest Ecosystem Atlas

People

Person
Matthew Peters
Ecologist
https://research.fs.usda.gov/about/people/matthew.p.peters

Publications

Matthew Peters, Stephen Matthews, Anantha M. Prasad, Louis Iverson. 2022. Defining landscape-level forest types: application of latent Dirichlet allocation to species distribution models
Northern Research Station USDA Forest Service. 2021. The Climate Change Tree Atlas: Managing Tree Species in the Face of Climate Change
Matthew Peters, Louis Iverson, Anantha M. Prasad, Stephen Matthews. 2019. Utilizing the density of inventory samples to define a hybrid lattice for species distribution models: DISTRIB‐II for 135 eastern U.S. trees
Louis Iverson, Matthew Peters, Anantha M. Prasad, Stephen Matthews. 2019. Analysis of Climate Change Impacts on Tree Species of the Eastern US: Results of DISTRIB-II Modeling
Stephen Matthews, Louis Iverson, Matthew Peters, Anantha M. Prasad. 2018. Assessing potential climate change pressures across the conterminous United States: mapping plant hardiness zones, heat zones, growing degree days, and cumulative drought severity throughout this century
Stephen Matthews, Louis Iverson, Anantha M. Prasad, Matthew Peters. 2011. Changes in potential habitat of 147 North American breeding bird species in response to redistribution of trees and climate following predicted climate change
Louis Iverson, Anantha M. Prasad, Stephen Matthews, Matthew Peters. 2011. Lessons learned while integrating habitat, dispersal, disturbance, and life-history traits into species habitat models under climate change
Anantha M. Prasad, Louis Iverson, Andy Liaw, Andy Liaw. 2006. Newer classification and regression tree techniques: Bagging and Random Forests for ecological prediction

Tree Bird Habitat Atlas Decision Support Model

Last updated March 13, 2026

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