Estrada-Gene/LiDAR_Forest_structure: Forest structure data

This folder contains all data and code necessary to replicate the analysis, results, and figures from Estrada et al. (2026) in Communications Biology.

Title: Ecologically defined scales outperform grids in models of mammal diversity

Authors: Gene R. Estrada*, Heiko U. Wittmer, Endro Setiawan, and Andrew J. Marshall

*Corresponding author: estradag@umich.edu

Workflow:

The file "forest_structure.Rmd" contains code to create plots and figures of the 12 forest structure metrics described in the publication.

The file "modeling.Rmd" contains code to calculate species diversity metrics, spatial autocorrelation metrics, and conduct all statistical modeling described in the publication. It also contains code used to create all other figures.

All code uses the raw data contained in the .csv files in the "data" folder.

All code was last run and produced the relevant output in R v4.3.1 on 2026-01-30.

This repo is a duplicate of information available at https://github.com/Estrada-Gene/LiDAR_Forest_structure.