Spatial Dataset of Species Distribution and Richness for Invasive Alien Plant Species under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Climate Scenarios in South Korea

This data paper presents a high‐resolution spatial dataset describing the current and future climatic suitability and species richness of 13 invasive alien plant species designated as “Invasive Alien Species” by the Ministry of Environment in South Korea. The target taxa include major invasive herbs and vines such as <i>Sicyos angulatus, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, Solidago altissima</i>, and <i>Humulus japonicus</i>, which dominate disturbed habitats along rivers, roadsides, and agricultural lands. The study area covers the entire territory of South Korea at 1 km<sup>2</sup> resolution. Species occurrence records were compiled from three primary sources: the National Ecosystem Survey Data (1997-2021), long-term biodiversity monitoring in national parks (2003- 2022), and peer-reviewed literature, using only GPS-referenced locations. After spatial quality control and aggregation to a 1 km<sup>2</sup> grid, the dataset contains 23,767 unique presence points for the 13 species. Environmental predictors consist of six bioclimatic variables (BIO1, BIO2, BIO3, BIO12, BIO13, BIO14) and three composite temperature-precipitation variables (Temp, Prec, Temprec) derived from a Korea Meteorological Administration ensemble of five regional climate models at 1 km<sup>2</sup> resolution. Baseline climate is defined for 1991-2010, and future conditions are provided for SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 in the 2030s, 2050s, 2070s and 2090s. Random Forest models were calibrated for each species using 3-fold cross-validation (mean receiver operating characteristic=0.772; true skill statistic=0.476; kappa=0.444). The resulting dataset includes 1) continuous habitat suitability rasters, 2) binary presence/absence rasters, 3) 1 km<sup>2</sup> grid-based species richness maps, and 4) municipality-level richness summaries for the baseline and all future time slices. These products provide a reusable basis for invasion risk assessment, climate-change impact analysis, and spatial prioritization of management actions, while representing climatic suitability rather than realized distributions or dispersal dynamics.