Brazilian Carbon Pools and Soil Flux Maps from NASA-CASA Model

NASA's LBA-ECO TG-05 dataset provides geospatial maps of carbon stocks and soil gas fluxes across Brazil. It contains 105 GeoTIFF files across three spatial resolutions (half-degree, one-degree, and 8-km) modeling data from 1982 to 2001. This output is from the NASA-Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) and other biogeochemical models.

Use Cases

• Modeling regional carbon budgets by analyzing maps of annual net primary production (ANPP) and live biomass carbon pools (leaf, wood, fine root).
• Estimating soil greenhouse gas emissions using monthly flux maps for N2O, NO, CO, and CH4 at one-degree resolution.
• Assessing soil characteristics for agricultural or ecological studies with 8-km resolution maps of soil texture, carbon, pH, and plant available water.
• Tracking changes in dead carbon pools over time via maps of metabolic leaf litter, structural leaf litter, woody detritus, and slow soil carbon.
• Calibrating earth system models with spatially explicit, multi-year (1982-1998, 2001) estimates of ecosystem productivity and carbon storage.

Strengths

• Provides multi-resolution spatial data (half-degree, one-degree, 8-km) for different analysis scales.
• Contains 105 distinct modeled geospatial layers across three file packages.
• Offers a 17-year time series (1982-1998) for core carbon variables, plus 2001 data for NPP.

Limitations

• Conflicting last updated dates: Data.gov lists 2026-03-13 (likely a metadata error), while NASA Earthdata lists 2001-12-31, indicating the underlying data is over two decades old.
• Model output may not reflect ground-truth measurements for all variables.
• Spatial coverage is limited to Brazil, restricting broader regional analyses.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Model output from the NASA-Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) and other modeling approaches.

Time Range

1982-1998, 2001

Freshness

2001-12-31

Geography

Brazil