A spatial dataset identifying a set of environmental conditions that have potential to inhibit growth of newly-established woody vegetation such that it might not reach a ‘forest’ status (defined as greater than 30% cover of trees of 5 m height) within a 30-40 year timeframe.
Inclusions: temperature, moisture availability, edaphic conditions, coastal exposure, and land instability
Exclusions: herbivory, competition, external gene pools, availability of seed sources and dispersers, and also fire
Source
The approach was to examine the limiting conditions for forests or tall woody vegetation, across the major environmental gradients of temperature, moisture availability, edaphic conditions, coastal exposure, and land instability. Soils and underlying geology are generally surrogates for major thresholds in these factors. These factors are inevitably mixed so, for simplicity, they have been examined one by one and reproducible conditions defined for each environmental factor. These conditions have been matched against pre-existing databases of soil, climate, topography and land cover to produce a spatial layer of environmentally limiting factors for forest growth (ELF). Note that biotic considerations such as herbivory, competition, external gene pools, availability of seed sources and dispersers, and also fire are excluded.
