CMS: Forest Biomass and Productivity for the Conterminous US, 2005

NASA's Carbon Monitoring System provides spatially-gridded estimates of above-ground biomass, net primary productivity, and net ecosystem productivity for US forests, derived by constraining a CASA process model with Forest Inventory and Analysis data. The dataset offers two spatial resolutions—1-degree and 5-km—for the nominal year 2005, along with uncertainty estimates for key variables. It excludes forest data from the Northern Prairie States region, focusing on carbon sources and sinks from recent forest disturbance and recovery.

Use Cases

• Modeling regional carbon budgets based on gridded estimates of above-ground biomass and net ecosystem productivity.
• Assessing forest carbon sequestration potential across different forest types and regions of the conterminous US.
• Validating satellite-derived biomass products using ground-constrained model outputs at 5-km resolution.
• Analyzing spatial patterns of forest productivity and disturbance recovery for climate mitigation planning.

Strengths

• Provides uncertainty estimates for above-ground biomass and net ecosystem productivity.
• Data is derived from a peer-reviewed process model (CASA) constrained by authoritative Forest Inventory and Analysis ground data.
• Offers outputs at two complementary spatial scales (1-degree and 5-km resolution).

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low; specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not provided.
• Temporal coverage is limited to a single nominal year (2005).
• Spatial coverage excludes forests in the Northern Prairie States region.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived using Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data to constrain forest growth rates in a Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) carbon-cycle process model.

Time Range

2005

Freshness

2026-04-10 (metadata update on Data.gov, though the underlying data is from 2005)

Geography

Forested areas of the conterminous United States (CONUS), excluding the Northern Prairie States region.