The forests of the midwestern United States at Euro-American settlement: Spatial and physical structure based on contemporaneous survey data.

ABSTRACT: We present gridded 8 km-resolution data products of the estimated stem density, basal area, and biomass of tree taxa at Euro-American settlement of the midwestern United States during the middle to late 19th century for the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. The data come from settlement-era Public Land Survey (PLS) data (ca. 0.8-km resolution) of trees recorded by land surveyors. The surveyor notes have been transcribed, cleaned, and processed to estimate stem density, basal area, and biomass at individual points. The point-level data are aggregated within 8 km grid cells and smoothed using a generalized additive statistical model that accounts for zero-inflated continuous data and provides approximate Bayesian uncertainty estimates. The statistical modeling

SUBMITTER: Paciorek CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7877788 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature