Climate change will likely modify the global distribution of biomes, but the magnitude of change is debated. In the paper belonging to this dataset, we followed a trait-based, statistical approach to model the influence of climate change on the global distribution of biomes. Step 1. We predicted the global distribution of plant community mean specific leaf area (SLA), height, and wood density as a function of climate and soil characteristics using an ensemble of statistical models. Step 2. We predicted the probability of occurrence of biomes as a function of the three traits with a classification model. Step 3. We projected changes in plant community mean traits and corresponding changes in biome distributions to 2070 for low (RCP 2.6; +1.2°C) and extreme (RCP 8.5; +3.5°C) future climate change scenarios.

Four R scripts are added to this dataset, starting with step two described in the paper: from traits to vegetation types (Traits.to.VegT.R). Input for this file is the csv file: all.trait.predictions.untransformed.csv which includes the predictions for community mean trait values for Specific Leaf Area (SLA), height and wood density, for the current climate and under the predictions under a climate change scenario with RCP2.6 and RCP8.5.