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Climate - in terms of temperature, precipitation and continentality - is a primary determinant in the distribution of African vegetation / ecosystems. Salvador Rivas-Martinez and Salvador Rivas-Saenz (2004) developed a global bioclimatic classification system that quantifies key bioclimatic indices reflective of vegetation distributions. These indices can be used to model thermotypes (i.e. hot-cold gradients), and ombrotypes (i.e. wet-dry gradients). Their model was translated into GIS spatial algorithms to produce bioclimate data for the US ecological systems mapping project (Sayre and others, 2009). These spatial models were used (with minor adaptations) with Worldclim climatological data (Hijmans et. al. 2005) to model/map African ombrotypes and thermotypes. These two datasets were then combined to produce an isobioclimate map with a total of 157 composite classes. |