A dataset of spatial distribution of bioclimatic variables in China at 1km resolution

Abstract

Bioclimatic variables are often used to investigate the relationships between species and vegetation distribution and climate in global change research, as well as to further simulate the geographical distribution patterns of both species and vegetation, and their functional characteristics. Regional bioclimate data sets, however, have been less reported. Based on an already interpolated dataset of 1km resolution climate variables in China at every 30-year averaged from 1951 to 1980 and from 1981 to 2010, respectively, nine kinds of bioclimatic variables were calculated in the present study, including the mean temperature of the coldest month, mean temperature of the warmest month, absolute maximum temperature, absolute minimum temperature, annual growing degree days above 0°C and 5°C, growing season precipitation, annual drought index and annual moisture index. Results show that every bioclimate variable demonstrates a decreasing trend from the southeast to the northwest of China and to the Tibetan Plateau except mean temperature of the warmest month and absolute maximum temperature, and varies greatly in different vegetation regions. An overall upward trend of bioclimatic change existed between 1951-1980 and 1981-2010, but such increase was small. This dataset provides reasonable environmentally mechanistic explanations for research on the relationships between species and vegetation and climate, and offers a convenient and diverse way for researchers to use bioclimatic variables to simulate species distribution pattern and vegetation structure and functions.Nine 1km spatial resolution bioclimatic variables datasets from 1951-1980 and 1981-2010 were deposited in two folders ( Appendix I and II ), 1951-1980 and 1981-2010, respectively, with the following naming rules : China-S-X-1km.Z. S Represents the years (1951-1980/1981-2010）. X represents the bioclimatic variables, Z represents the format of the data, respectively, two-dimensional uniform grid format (.grd ), ASCII character set encoding text file format (.asc ) and tag image file format (.tif ). In this way, this dataset has three sets of formats that can be used for different research objectives. In addition, the image file format for each variable (.jpg ) is provided for ease of access.