This data is associated with the publication Mast Hindcasting reveals pervasive effects of extreme drought on a foundational conifer species, in New Phytologist, 2025.

Description of the data and file structure

Data descriptions can be found in the associated metadata.

Validation Data contains a csv file, containing testing data used in model validation. These data were collected for this study and have not been previously published elsewhere.  These data are associated with this data release by relation to the publication and associated analyses but should be considered auxiliary to the primary components.

The columns in the Validation Data are as follows:

site - unique ID

year - year of a given cone scar as observed on a given branch.  This must be adjusted +1 to reflect cone production in the year of maturation.  

cwd - 30 year average annual climatic water deficit, a measurement of cumulative drought stress, derived from TerraClimate

mon - 30 year average annual proportion of monsoon precipitation falling between July-Sep, derived from PRISM

cone_total - the number of cone scars counted multiplied by the number of cone bearing branches

fert_vpd - z-score scaled vapor pressure deficit during the year of cone pollination (year of cone scar observation, -1 from maturation)

aug_vpd - z-score scaled vapor pressure deficit during the year of cone initiation (-1 year of cone scar observation, -2 from maturation)

x - Longitude (EPSG:4326)

y - Latitude (EPSG:4326)

scaled_cones - a relativized measure of annual cone production at a given site compared to all years measured.  These values are standardized between 0-1 to reflect low cone years (closer to zero) and high cone years (closer to one).  Predictor variable used in most/all models.

____________________________________

Raw predictions - the raw model output and associated bootstrapped confidence intervals
Prediction percentiles - transformed model predictions, constrained to 0-1 representing the relative ranking of a given mast year at a given pixel relative to all other years at that same location.

Raw predictions includes a file - model out, which is the primary datafile associated with this release. The folder “bootstrapped CI” contains the 5th and 95th percentiles of bootstrapped predictions, as well as the confidence interval width for each year, and the mean CI width for all years.

Prediction percentiles includes a similar file - scaled, which is the secondary datafile associated with this release. Each raster layer contains values between 0-1. These values represent the rank-order mast year relative to all other years at a given pixel. The bootstrapped CI’s are identical to those above, but again, transformed to values between 0-1.

Email awion@usgs.gov or andreas.wion@gmail.com with data quality issues or questions.