Welcome to the Seedlot Explorer for Extrazonal Deployment - SEED

SEED provides a suite of tools designed to help land managers quickly and efficiently find well-adapted seed sources for any planting target in Washington, Oregon, or California (i.e USFS Regions 5 & 6). SEED is designed primarily for use on National Forest System lands, but some of its tools can be used across all land ownerships. The instructions below walk through a typical SEED workflow and describe how each of the parts of SEED operate. Please note that some features of SEED are limited to certain regions. For instance, seed inventory data is not available for California. If you run into any issues or bugs, please notify the developer of SEED - Bryan Reatini at Bryan.Reatini@usda.gov so they can be promptly resolved.

Instructions

Step 1 - Assess risk of local maladaptation for sets of seed/breeding zones
Select the 'Mismatch Viewer' tab at the top of the page. This will bring you to a tool for visualizing the degree of climate mismatch for sets of seed/breeding zones. This tool will help you assess the risk of local maladaptation for zones of interest, which can help you target zones for adaptive seed deployment.
Step 2 - Explore Seedlot Selection Tool results for any seed/breeding zone
Select the 'SST Viewer' tab at the top of the page. This will bring you to a tool for visualizing zone-based Seedlot Selection Tool (SST) runs for any seed/breeding zone in regions 5 or 6. SST runs generated here follow the same general methodology as the default conditions in SST web-app for zone-based runs (i.e. using the zone-center method for defining the Transfer Limit and the default climate variables). Therefore, this tool can help you quickly and efficiently view SST runs for a given seed/breeding zone in order to identify where seed originating from that zone will be well-adapted under present-day climate conditions, and where it is projected to remain well-adapted under future conditions.
Step 3 - Build an adaptive seed deployment plan for any planting target on National Forest Service lands
Select the 'Deployment Builder' tab. This will bring you to a tool that ranks adaptive seed sources for a given species, climate condition, and deployment target. This tool will then automatically assess the suitability of every potential seed source in the selected region for that deployment target. In short, this tool can help you assemble a set of seed sources that can provide well-adapted seed for any planting target on NFS lands, assess the amount of adaptive seed that is currently available from those sources, and identify areas to collect adaptive seed from, if more seed is required.
Tool Description: The interactive map below displays the degree of climate mismatch from historic climate conditions (1961-1990) to present-day climate conditions (1991-2020) for the selected set of seed/breeding zones. Climate mismatch is quantified as the percentage of the zone that, under present-day conditions, remains within the historic range of climate conditions observed within the zone (i.e. the percentage of the zone within its transfer limit). Darker shades of red denote zones with greater degrees of climate mismatch, wheras lighter shades denote more climatically stable zones. In general, zones that are more mismatched are at greater risk of local seed suffering from reduced performance (e.g. long-term growth and survival) due to being maladapted to the present-day conditions within the zone. These are high priority zones to target for adaptive seed deployment. The results can be saved as a shapefile using the button below the plot.
Export Climate Mismatch Shapefile
Tool Description: The interactive map below displays zone-based Seedlot Selection Tool (SST) runs for the selected seed/breeding zone. SST runs are generated using the climate center of the selected zone and the historic range of variation in the zone to define the Transfer Limit. The two variables used to calculate match scores are Mean Coldest Month Temperature (associated with cold hardiness) and Summer Heat: Moisture index (associated with drought tolerance). In the map, climate matched acreage is scored 1-4 with 1 being matched to just present-day climate, 2 for acreage matched from present through early century (Present-2040), 3 for present through mid century (Present-2070), and 4 for present through late century (Present-2100). Projected conditions for early, mid, and late century use the representative concentration pathway of 4.5 (RCP 4.5). Thus, acreage with a score of 4 (Present-2100) represents areas where seed from the selected source zone will likely remain well-adapted from present-day conditions (i.e. based on empirical data) through the end of the century (based on climate projections). This is the best case scenario. However, it is important to note that all areas colored in this plot (i.e. all areas with scores 1-4) are AT LEAST matched under present-day climate conditions. The selected SST run can also be saved as a tiff using the download button below the plot.
Export Seedlot Selection Tool Run
Tool Description: The two tabs below allow you to quickly and efficiently identify well-adapted seed sources for any deployment target on NFS lands in regions 5 or 6. Specifically, the left-hand navigation panel allows you to select the species you're hoping to find seed for, where you're hoping to deploy seed (i.e. the deployment target), and your criteria for identifying seed sources (e.g. which types of source zones, and both climate and geographic transfer distances). The 'Matched Deployments' tab shows a table of all potential seed sources that are a match for the selected deployment target, ranked by how good of a match they are. It also shows the balance of seed available in the regional seed inventory for each of those source zones. In this table, you can select rows to save to a csv (using the button below the table) or to visualize results for. The 'Deployment Viewer' tab is then used to visualize the results for the source zones selected in the table. Specifically, an interactive plot displays the matched acreage for each selected deployment (i.e. source zone) within the deployment target, a summary plot of the balance of seed available for each selected deployment, and a plot of the long-term projection of climate match for each selected deployment within the deployment target. These results can be saved as both a shapefile or html report using the download buttons below the plots.
Save Deployment Report
Save Shapefile