Data from: Matching seed to site by climate similarity: Techniques to prioritize plant materials development and use in restoration

Land management agencies are increasing the use of native plant materials for vegetation treatments to restore ecosystem function and maintain natural ecological integrity. This shift towards the use of natives has highlighted a need to increase the diversity of materials available. A key problem is agreeing on how many, and which, new accessions should be developed. Here we describe new methods that address this problem. Our methods use climate data to calculate a climate similarity index between two points in a defined extent. This index can be used to predict relative performance of available accessions at a target site. In addition, the index can be used in combination with standard cluster analysis algorithms to quantify and maximize climate coverage (mean climate similarity), given a modeled range extent and a specified number of accessions. We demonstrate the utility of this latter feature by applying it to the extents of 11 Western North American species with proven or potential use in restoration. First, a species-specific seed transfer map can be readily generated for a species by predicting performance for accessions currently available; this map can be readily updated to accommodate new accessions. Next, the increase in climate coverage achieved by adding successive accessions can be explored, yielding information that managers can use to balance ecologic and economic considerations in determining how many accessions to develop. This approach identifies sampling sites, referred to as climate centers, which contribute unique, complementary climate coverage to accessions on hand, thus providing explicit sampling guidance for both germplasm preservation and research. We examine how these, and other, features of our approach add to existing methods used to guide plant materials development and use. Finally, we discuss how these new methods provide a framework that could be used to coordinate native plant materials development, evaluation, and use across agencies, regions, and research groups.Climate Similarity Support ScriptsThis compressed file contains scripts and supporting data necessary to reproduce the analyses and products associated with Doherty et al. (2017), "Matching seed to site by climate similarity: Techniques to prioritize plant materials development and use in restoration."Climate Similarity Scripts.zi