DOI: 10.5061/dryad.mw6m905zf
title: Predicted impacts of climate change on wild and commercial berry habitats will have food security, conservation and agricultural implications

description: Climate change is now a reality and is altering ecosystems, with Canada
 experiencing 2-4x the global average rate of warming. This will have a
 critical impact on berry cultivation and horticulture as well as wild,
 traditional and country food species. Enhancing our understanding of how
 wild and cultivated berries will be essential to mitigating impacts on
 ecosystems, culture and food security. Our objective was to predict the
 impact of climate change on habitat suitability of four berry
 producing Vaccinium species: two species with primarily
 northern distributions (V. uliginosum, V. vitis-idaea) and one
 species with a primarily southern distribution (V. oxycoccos) and the
 commercially cultivated V. macrocarpon. We used the maximum
 entropy (maxent) model and the CMIP6 shared socioeconomic
 pathways (SSPs) 126 and 585 projected to 2041-2060 and 2061-2080. Wild
 species showed a uniform northward progression and expansion of suitable
 habitat. Our modeling predicts that suitable growing regions for
 commercial cranberries is also likely to shift with some farms becoming
 unsuitable for the current varieties and other regions becoming more
 suitable for cranberry farms. Both V.
 macrocarpon and V. oxycoccos showed a high
 dependence on precipitation associated variables. V.
 vitis-idaea and V. uliginosum had a greater
 number of variables with smaller contributions which may improve their
 resilience to individual climactic events. Future competition between
 commercial cranberry farms and wild berries in protected areas could lead
 to conflicts between agriculture and conservation priorities. New
 varieties of commercial berries are required to maintain current
 commercial berry farms.
description: # Predicted impacts of climate change on wild and commercial berry
 habitats will have food security, conservation and agricultural
 implications Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.mw6m905zf](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.mw6m905zf) ##
 Description of the data and file structure Our objective was to predict
 the impact of climate change on habitat suitability of four berry
 producing *Vaccinium* species: two species with primarily northern
 distributions (*V. uliginosum*, *V. vitis-idaea*) and one species with a
 primarily southern distribution (*V. oxycoccos*) and the commercially
 cultivated *V. macrocarpon*. We used the maximum entropy (maxent) model
 and the CMIP6 shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) 126 and 585 projected
 to 2041-2060 and 2061-2080. ### Files and variables #### File:
 R-code-climatechangeberries.R **Description:** The R script used to
 generate these models is provided in R-code-climatechangeberries.R ####
 File: macrocarpon.zip **Description:** Directory for Vaccinium macrocarpon
 contains a .tif file of a predicted current range suitability and four
 subdirectories with .tif files for the outputs of maxent ecological niche
 modelling: * mean: averaged suitability for each scenario for CNRM, MIROC
 and MRI * change: difference between mean raster and current range
 prediction * stdev: standard deviation of the averaged suitability between
 each of the scenarios CNRM, MIROC and MRI *
 suitability-allscenarios_allmodels: individual rasters for each model run
 #### File: oxycoccos.zip **Description:** Directory for Vaccinium
 oxycoccos contains a .tif file of a predicted current range suitability
 and four subdirectories with .tif files for the outputs of maxent
 ecological niche modelling: * mean: averaged suitability for each scenario
 for CNRM, MIROC and MRI * change: difference between mean raster and
 current range prediction * stdev: standard deviation of the averaged
 suitability between each of the scenarios CNRM, MIROC and MRI *
 suitability-allscenarios_allmodels: individual rasters for each model run
 #### File: uliginosum.zip **Description:** Directory for Vaccinium
 uliginosum contains a .tif file of a predicted current range suitability
 and four subdirectories with .tif files for the outputs of maxent
 ecological niche modelling: * mean: averaged suitability for each scenario
 for CNRM, MIROC and MRI * change: difference between mean raster and
 current range prediction * stdev: standard deviation of the averaged
 suitability between each of the scenarios CNRM, MIROC and MRI *
 suitability-allscenarios_allmodels: individual rasters for each model run
 #### File: vitis-idaea.zip **Description:** Directory for Vaccinium
 vitis-idaea contains a .tif file of a predicted current range suitability
 and four subdirectories with .tif files for the outputs of maxent
 ecological niche modelling: * mean: averaged suitability for each scenario
 for CNRM, MIROC and MRI * change: difference between mean raster and
 current range prediction * stdev: standard deviation of the averaged
 suitability between each of the scenarios CNRM, MIROC and MRI *
 suitability-allscenarios_allmodels: individual rasters for each model run
 Data is organized into 4 directories (.zip files) grouped and named by
 species (Vaccinium): macrocarpon, oxycoccos, uliginosum and vitis-idaea
 File naming conventions utilize the following abbreviations by species: VI
 - Vaccinium vitis-idaea VO - Vaccinium oxycoccos VU - Vaccinium uliginosum
 VM - Vaccinium macrocarpon Shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP) modelled and
 year to which the prediction extends is appended to the name as follows:
 126-60 - SSP1-2.6 projected to 2060 126-80 - SSP1-2.6 projected to 2080
 585-60 - SSP5-8.5 projected to 2060 585-80 - SSP5-8.5 projected to 2080 ##
 Code/software The R script used to generate these models is provided in
 R-code-climatechangeberries.R TIF files were generated in QGIS (version
 3.16.14 long-term release, QGIS.org, 2021) R Code was generated in R
 version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14) -- "Race for Your Life"