Stacked species distribution models of deep-sea corals and sponges off the United States west coast (NCEI Accession 0303081)

These data are a set of raster maps of community-level predictions of deep-sea coral and sponge taxa distributions off the continental U.S. west coast, spanning depths from 50 to 1200 m. The raster files come in two versions: one where predicted distribution suitability range from 0 - 1 and one where the predicted suitability is classified into five classes; very low (0–0.2), low (0.21–0.40), moderate (0.41–0.60), high (0.61–0.80) and very high (0.81–1.00). These raster maps were derived from 40 deep-sea coral and sponge habitat suitability models (HSMs), generated at the genus- and species-level maps generated by Poti et al. (2020). A cluster analysis of the HSMs identified 10 groups whose member taxa were stacked and averaged to produce a stacked species distribution model (S-SDM). The individual S-SDM rasters are numbered and the numbers refer to distinct groups identified in the cluster analysis. The member taxa for each S-SDM are listed in a data dictionary included with this data package. Further details about the generation of the S-SDMs and their interpretation can be found in Shantharam et al. (2025).