Find regions worldwide with a climate similar to your region of interest, and see whether a selected plant species grows there.
Select Region of Interest
Select Species
Questions? Contact Cal-IPC
Click on the map or select from the list below. You can view/select by either:
Find where a plant grows outside of cultivation around the world.
Note: GBIF may cap the number of results returned. If you are not seeing the species you are looking for, try a more specific search.
Select a single species below to add its occurrence density to the map.
One Moment Please
This Climate Match Tool was designed to support the Plant Risk Evaluator (PRE) webtool, which assesses the risk of a plant becoming invasive in a given region of interest. (Neither PRE nor this tool are designed to work for aquatic plants, just for terrestrial plants.) The tool shows whether a plant species occurs in other areas of the world with a climate similar to the region of interest. This is a useful function for those using other invasive plant assessment approaches since a plant’s behavior in other places with a similar climate is often a key criterion.
This tool compares climatic parameters in the selected region of interest with parameters around the world. The three climatic parameters considered are precipitation (in bands of 5 inches annual precipitation), USDA hardiness zone ("Hardiness"), and UN global ecological zone ("Ecozone").
By combining all three ("Combined"), the tool determines which areas around the globe have climatic parameters matching those in at least a part of the region of interest. The tool trims off very uncommon (the bottom 1%) combinations of climatic parameters from your region.
Light green shading shows areas with climatic parameters that almost match one of the combinations of climate parameters from the region of interest – the precipitation band or hardiness zone are one increment different from an exact match with a combination from your selected region of interest.
Data for precipitation bands and plant hardiness zones: "SAFARIS (Spatial Analytic Framework for Advanced Risk Information Systems)" Mapping portal. https://safaris.cipm.info/safarispestmodel/StartupServlet?safaristools
Methods for precipitation bands and plant hardiness zones: Takeuchi et al. 2023. SAFARIS: a spatial analytic framework for pest forecast systems. Frontiers of Insect Science 3:1198355. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/insect-science/articles/10.3389/finsc.2023.1198355/full
Global ecozones: Beck et al. 2023. High-resolution (1 km) Köppen-Geiger maps for 1901–2099 based on constrained CMIP6 projections. Scientific Data 10, 724, doi:10.1038/s41597-023–02549‑6. https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/High-resolution_1_km_K_ppen-Geiger_maps_for_1901_2099_based_on_constrained_CMIP6_projections/21789074/1
Plant species distribution: Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). https://www.gbif.org/
The data presented on the map has a resolution of 0.1 degrees (approximately 10,500m square).
Select your region of interest from the dropdown menus for States or Ecoregions. You can select regions by clicking on the list or on the map, and you may select multiple regions. To de-select a region, click on it again. A black outline will appear around selected regions. The map will show other areas whose climate matches the climate in part or all of the selected region of interest. You can adjust the transparency of the climate layer using the slider.
Select a plant species by typing its scientific or common name into the search box, clicking the search button, and selecting the appropriate species from the list of options. The map will show the plant’s known presence worldwide. Note that the size of the grid cells is scale-dependent – they get smaller as you zoom in.
If you wish to save your result or send the search parameters to a colleague, use the "Share and Download" button.