EMERITUS GEOLOGIST
Email:
rthompson@usgs.gov
Office Phone:
303-236-5347
Fax:
303-236-5349
ORCID:
0000-0001-9287-2954
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On the continental scale, climate is an important determinant of the distributions of plant taxa and ecoregions. To quantify and depict the relations between specific climate variables and these distributions, we placed modern climate and plant taxa distribution data on an approximately 25-kilometer (km) equal-area grid with 27,984 points that cover Canada and the continental United States (Thompson and others, 2015). The gridded climatic data include annual and monthly temperature and precipitation, as well as bioclimatic variables (growing degree days, mean temperatures of the coldest and warmest months, and a moisture index) based on 1961-1990 30-year mean values from the University of East Anglia (UK) Climatic...
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This data release includes climatic variables and associated descriptive material created for the purpose of assessing uncertainties associated with climatic estimates based on vegetation assemblages (Thompson and others, 2021). The data are from the interior of the western United States, including all of Arizona, and portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. The data are observed, interpolated, and estimated values for the mean temperature of the coldest month (MTCO, degrees C), mean temperature of the warmest month (MTWA, degrees C), and mean annual total precipitation (MAP, mm).
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This data release provides a digital inventory of the Robert S. Thompson packrat midden collection consisting of 1,740 midden samples and subsamples primarily collected in the Great Basin region of Nevada, as well as in Arizona, California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, and Washington, USA, by Robert S. Thompson (USGS scientist emeritus) and others between 1977 and 2006. Middens are waste piles composed of the urine and feces of packrats (Neotoma spp.) also containing plant materials, bones, and insects. Radiocarbon dating of middens indicates they can be preserved for as long as 50,000 years, and their fossil plant assemblages document changes in plant community composition through time, providing important records...
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