Ecological Climatology and Distribution Modelling

Reliable information about the land surface and vegetation is a prerequisite for managing protected areas, maintaining biodiversity or even predicting climate change. Yet, despite the enormous efforts in field-mapping campaigns, the coverage of vegetation maps in Norway is low. To supplement the coverage of vegetation maps, statistical methods were applied to predict the vegetation distribution. Information about environmental conditions regulating the vegetation distributions were extracted in the process. Moreover, the environmental information about the preferences of each vegetation type was used to improve the ecological components of climate models. This doctoral thesis (1) presents detailed predictions of vegetation-type distribution for the whole Norway; (2) shows that large-scale landscape patterns are helpful additional information for establishing good predictions; (3) tests ways of assembling wall-to-wall vegetation maps; and (4) improves how vegetation is represented in climate models. The doctoral work focuses on the Norwegian terrestrial areas, but the methodological findings are applicable to the high-latitude, boreal and alpine ecosystems