The Species Potential Habitat Tool (SPHT) will allow managers to identify suitable species for specific sites under current climates and a range of future climate change scenarios.

Conservation Biology Institute is working with the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University to develop the Species Potential Habitat Tool (SPHT), which will allow managers to identify suitable species for specific sites under current climates and a range of future climate change scenarios. The tool will allow forest managers to select species to plant or to promote using other silvicultural activities such as natural regeneration or thinning. Thus, the SPHT can help promote the transition of forest to species compositions that are better adapted to future climates. The SPHT may be used in conjunction with the SST to allow users to explore options for both species-level and within-species assisted migration.

The project will initially focus on five key species (e.g., Douglas-fir, lodgepole pine, ponderosa pine, Sitka spruce, and Engelmann spruce) in western North America, but this will eventually be expanded to 42 tree species.  The current tool is a prototype.

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