Fine Root Biomass Across China at 1 km Resolution, 2005–2025
by Wenlu Zheng·Updated 15d ago
2.5 GB42files
Available on 1 platform
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Description
From 2005 to 2025, this dataset provides gridded estimates of fine root biomass density across China at 1 km spatial resolution and 20 cm depth intervals down to 2 meters. It was generated by Wenlu Zheng using random forest models trained on 2,311 woody and 3,580 herbaceous in-situ measurements from peer-reviewed studies. The models explain approximately 86% and 81% of the variation in surface fine root biomass density for woody and herbaceous ecosystems, respectively.
Use Cases
Modeling belowground carbon storage based on gridded fine root biomass estimates.
Analyzing the vertical distribution of root biomass across different soil depths and vegetation types.
Investigating the influence of climate, soil texture, and aridity on root system architecture.
Benchmarking and validating terrestrial ecosystem models with observationally constrained root data.
Strengths
Model evaluation shows high explanatory power, explaining approximately 86% and 81% of variation for woody and herbaceous surface FRB density.
Based on a substantial observational foundation of 2,311 woody and 3,580 herbaceous in-situ measurements.
Provides high-resolution (1 km) and vertically resolved (0–2 m at 20 cm intervals) data for all of China.
Covers a 21-year time series from 2005 to 2025, allowing for analysis of temporal change.
Limitations
Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
The dataset is large (2.5 GB), which may require significant storage and processing resources.
Provenance
Source
Wenlu Zheng via figshare
Collection Method
Random forest models trained on compiled in-situ measurements from peer-reviewed literature.