Some considerations to keep in mind when interpreting results from the Tree Atlas in your region:

• First, your region may contain a wide range of ecological variability like ours does, especially elevation and soil differences, which means the recommendations may align differently across an area. For example, what may thrive along the rich soils of the Hudson River may not do well in the rocky, high elevations of of the Berkshire or Green Mountains.
• Second, the Tree Atlas focusses on climate-resilience by considering projected weather changes over time; it doesn’t attempt to deal with all possible stressors, like increases of pests and diseases even though some of these stressors can be exacerbated by a changing climate. For example, the Atlas rates American beech (Fagus grandifolia) as having good climate adaptability under the higher climate scenario, yet diseases affecting beech in our region might argue against focusing on replanting beech versus other more adaptive species.
• Third, introducing non-endemic species to an area requires care to select the most hearty seed sources from the most similar regions, bringing characteristics of the most compatible local ecotypes. For example, species like paw paw or American persimmon do not naturally occur in our region, so we must seek out seed from the most cold-hearty individual trees from similar regions. We attempt to do this with all of our seed sourcing and we expect for many new species to our area there will be a period of further selection as new groves and orchards are established, so future generations of these species can be as adaptable as possible to their new environments.