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Global bioclimatic datasets are being widely used in ecological research to estimate the potential distribution of species using Climate Envelope Models (CEMs). These datasets are easily available and offer high resolution information for all land areas globally. However, they have not been tested rigorously in smaller regions, and their use in regional CEM studies may pose problems derived from their poor representation of local climate features. Moreover, these problems may be enhanced when using CEMs for future climate projections—a topic of current active research—due to the uncertainty derived from the future altered climate scenarios.

In this paper we use distributional data of European beech (Fagus sylvatica) in Northern Iberian Peninsula to analyze the discrepancies of the CEMs (predictive skill, variable importance and consistency using different predictor subsets) resulting from three alternative public …