While most ecological studies focus on the impact of climate change on some populations or species, broader, ecosystem-based information is needed to better predict the future state of the Arctic. We therefore conducted a large-scale study aimed at characterizing the vulnerability of tundra ecosystems to climate change through modelling. As part of this study, we obtained distributions of birds and mammals species of the province of Québec north of the 50th parallel during our baseline period (1981-2010). Due to the lack of information relative to species distribution in our study area, we used extent of occurrence data (or distribution polygons). Even if this kind of data is less precise than georeferenced field locations, extents of occurrence allow to study all species encountered in our study area. Mammals data come from the Digital Distribution Maps database of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2014; data available at http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/spatial-data). Birds data come from the Bird Species Distribution Maps of the World database, managed jointly by BirdLife International and NatureServe (BirdLife International & NatureServe, 2015; data available at http://datazone.birdlife.org/species/requestdis). These two databases are very similar and contain for each species spatial polygons (shapefiles) for each phenological periods (migration, breeding areas, wintering, etc.). After excluding migration paths, we reported on a 10 km x 10 km grid presence-absence for 183 species (146 birds and 37 mammals). Species distributions are available in NetCDF format (see the Supplementary documentation section to use NetCDF files with R).
