Terrestrial Biodiversity Adaptation Research Network

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BIOCLIM 01-35 PDF Print E-mail
GIS Layers, Resources, Climate Information
Thursday, 24 December 2009 10:43

Description

Bioclimatic variables are derived from the monthly temperature and rainfall values in order to generate more biologically meaningful variables. These are often used in ecological niche modeling (e.g., BIOCLIM, GARP). The bioclimatic variables represent annual trends (e.g., mean annual temperature, annual precipitation) seasonality (e.g., annual range in temperature and precipitation) and extreme or limiting environmental factors (e.g., temperature of the coldest and warmest month, and precipitation of the wet and dry quarters). A quarter is a period of three months (1/4 of the year).
 
They are coded as follows:
 
BIO1 = Annual Mean Temperature
BIO2 = Mean Diurnal Range (Mean of monthly (max temp - min temp))
BIO3 = Isothermality (P2/P7) (* 100)
BIO4 = Temperature Seasonality (standard deviation *100)
BIO5 = Max Temperature of Warmest Month
BIO6 = Min Temperature of Coldest Month
BIO7 = Temperature Annual Range (P5-P6)
BIO8 = Mean Temperature of Wettest Quarter
BIO9 = Mean Temperature of Driest Quarter
BIO10 = Mean Temperature of Warmest Quarter
BIO11 = Mean Temperature of Coldest Quarter
BIO12 = Annual Precipitation
BIO13 = Precipitation of Wettest Month
BIO14 = Precipitation of Driest Month
BIO15 = Precipitation Seasonality (Coefficient of Variation)
BIO16 = Precipitation of Wettest Quarter
BIO17 = Precipitation of Driest Quarter
BIO18 = Precipitation of Warmest Quarter
BIO19 = Precipitation of Coldest Quarter
 
This scheme follows that of ANUCLIM, except that for temperature seasonality the standard deviation was used because a coefficient of variation does not make sense with temperatures between -1 and 1).
This AML (Arc-Info workstation script) was used to generate these layers.
 
View Resource
WorldClim http://www.worldclim.org/: was developed by Robert J. Hijmans, Susan Cameron, and Juan Parra, at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley.
This dataset is freely available for academic and other non-commercial use. Redistribution, or commercial use, is not allowed without prior permission.
 
SUMMARY
Type of data
Dataset
Function
Climate
Format
Esri Grids and Generic Grids
Licence
Use reproduce, adapt and distribute data and derivatives to end-users. Cost free download
Coverage
Australia, World wide
Resolution/Scale
30 seconds, 2.5 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes.
Coordinate System and Datum
Geographical, WGS 84.
Source
WorldClim

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
Last Updated on Wednesday, 17 November 2010 09:25