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ISLSCP II Potential Natural Vegetation Cover

Metadata Updated: December 7, 2023

This data set was developed to describe the state of the global land cover in terms of 15 major vegetation types, plus water, before alteration by humans. It forms a complement to the historical croplands data set developed by Ramankutty and Foley (1999). By overlaying the two, one can determine the extent to which natural vegetation has been cleared for cultivation. This data set can be used directly within spatially-explicit climate and biogeochemical models. There are four total files in this data set. Two files contain the land cover types representing potential natural vegetation before human alteration, and two other files contain those points in the original data set submitted by the Principal Investigator that have been modified in order to match the land/water mask of the ISLSCP Initiative II.The geographic distribution of contemporary land cover types can be derived from remotely-sensed data. However, humans now dominate much of the world and there is little evidence of the pre-human-settlement natural vegetation or Potential Natural Vegetation (PNV). PNV, as defined here, does not necessarily represent the world's natural pre-human-disturbance vegetation. Rather, our definition of PNV represents the world's vegetation cover that would most likely exist now in equilibrium with present-day climate and natural disturbance, in the absence of human activities.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date October 25, 2023
Metadata Updated Date December 7, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

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Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date October 25, 2023
Metadata Updated Date December 7, 2023
Publisher ORNL_DAAC
Maintainer
Identifier C2784887174-ORNL_CLOUD
Data First Published 2023-10-15
Language en-US
Data Last Modified 2023-10-17
Category ISLSCP II, geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://data.nasa.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Citation Ramankutty, N., J.A. Foley, F.G. Hall, G.J. Collatz, B.W. Meeson, S.O. Los, E.Brown De Colstoun, and D.R. Landis. 2010. ISLSCP II Potential Natural Vegetation Cover. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/961
Graphic Preview Description Browse Image
Graphic Preview File https://daac.ornl.gov/graphics/browse/sdat-tds/961_1_fit.png
Harvest Object Id 4b6a29c6-e97f-4251-9a36-70c7d10b7f49
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/961
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -180.0 -90.0 180.0 90.0
Program Code 026:001
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 5e1bbd2f0543e17a14b625b663451783640b44af72ffef50e6b41eaffddfaa1e
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 1992-04-01T00:00:00Z/1993-04-01T23:59:59Z

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