ISLSCP II Land Cover: Global Distributions from 1992-1993 AVHRR Data

April 1992 to March 1993 land cover data derived from 1-kilometer AVHRR satellite imagery. This dataset provides the geographic distributions of 17 IGBP DISCover and 15 SiB land cover classes, aggregated to 0.25, 0.5, and 1.0-degree spatial resolutions, with values representing the percentage of each coarse cell occupied by a cover type. It is part of the ISLSCP II collection containing 50 global datasets for the period 1986-1995, designed for modeling global carbon, water, and energy cycles.

Use Cases

• Calibrating or validating global climate models based on aggregated land cover percentages.
• Analyzing changes in vegetation or land use over time within the 1986-1995 ISLSCP II period.
• Studying the spatial distribution of biomes using the dominant land cover class for each grid cell.
• Incorporating satellite-derived land cover fractions into hydrological or carbon cycle simulations.

Strengths

• Part of a consistent, multi-decadal collection (ISLSCP II) containing 50 global datasets.
• Provides data at three standard spatial resolutions (0.25, 0.5, and 1.0 degrees) for model interoperability.
• Based on a full year of satellite data (April 1992-March 1993) processed by authoritative agencies (USGS EROS Data Center).

Limitations

• Key metadata such as column names, row counts, and exact file sizes are unavailable across all platforms.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates (2026 vs. 1995) suggest potential metadata errors or stale provenance information.
• The original 1km resolution data has been aggregated, which may obscure fine-scale landscape details.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration; data compiled by USGS EROS Data Center from AVHRR satellite imagery.

Collection Method

Derived from the 1km DISCover dataset, aggregated to coarser resolutions and adjusted to match the ISLSCP II land/water mask.

Time Range

Primary data from April 1992 to March 1993; part of a collection spanning 1986 to 1995.

Freshness

2026-04-10 02:03:28.429977 (from datagov, but conflicts with nasa_earthdata date of 1995-12-31)

Geography

Global