Global Biomass Carbon Density Maps for 2010

Global maps provide harmonized estimates of aboveground and belowground biomass carbon density for the year 2010 at a 300-meter spatial resolution. The dataset integrates multiple land-cover specific remote sensing sources, including woody, grassland, cropland, and tundra biomass, from published literature. It was produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and includes ancillary uncertainty maps for pixel-level estimates.

Use Cases

• Modeling global carbon budgets using the aboveground and belowground biomass carbon density layers.
• Assessing land-cover specific carbon storage in forests, grasslands, croplands, and tundra ecosystems.
• Validating other biomass or carbon stock models with the provided 300-meter resolution global maps.
• Analyzing spatial patterns of biomass uncertainty using the included pixel-level uncertainty maps.
• Informing conservation and climate policy with spatially explicit data on terrestrial carbon density.

Strengths

• Provides a harmonized, temporally consistent global snapshot for a single year (2010).
• Integrates multiple specialized remote sensing maps for different land-cover types (woody, grassland, cropland, tundra).
• Offers high spatial resolution at 300 meters for detailed analysis.
• Includes separate uncertainty maps for assessing reliability of pixel-level estimates.

Limitations

• Conflicting last updated dates: datagov lists 2026-03-13 (likely a metadata error), while nasa_earthdata lists 2010-12-31.
• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are not provided on any platform.
• Limited to a single temporal snapshot (year 2010) without time-series data.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Integration of land-cover specific remotely sensed maps from published literature, updated where necessary, and processed using ancillary maps of percent tree cover and landcover with a rule-based decision tree.

Time Range

2010

Freshness

2010-12-31

Geography

Global