LBA Regional Freshwater Wetlands: 1-Degree Grid for Amazonia

A 1995 geospatial subset provides a 1-degree gridded map of freshwater wetlands for the Amazon Basin (10° N to 25° S, 30° to 85° W). The data, derived from Aselman and Crutzen's (1989) global wetlands maps and Klinger's Alaskan data, was interpolated to a uniform grid for use in global climate models. It was created to support the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), an international research initiative led by Brazil.

Use Cases

• Parameterizing wetland extent in global or regional climate models based on the 1-degree gridded percent cover data.
• Analyzing the historical distribution of freshwater wetlands in the Amazon Basin for ecological and hydrological studies.
• Providing a baseline land cover layer for assessing the impact of land use change on Amazonian ecosystems.
• Studying the role of wetlands in regional climatological and biogeochemical cycles as part of LBA-related research.

Strengths

• Data is derived from two established sources: Aselman and Crutzen's (1989) global wetlands maps and Klinger's political Alaska data set.
• Provides a uniform, 1-degree by 1-degree gridded product specifically designed for convenient use in climate models.
• Created for a major international research program (LBA), indicating relevance for foundational earth science.

Limitations

• Metadata conflicts on freshness: one platform lists a last updated date of 2026-04-10, while another indicates the underlying data is from 1995-09-01.
• Column names and specific data values (e.g., percent cover categories) are not provided in the available metadata.
• The spatial resolution (1-degree) is coarse for local-scale ecological or land management applications.

Provenance

Source

Stillwell-Soller et al. (1995), assembled from Aselman and Crutzen (1989) and Klinger's data.

Collection Method

Bilinear interpolation of source wetland percent cover maps to a standard 1-degree grid.

Time Range

1995 (publication date of the derived dataset).

Freshness

Underlying data is from 1995, though metadata records show conflicting last updated dates (1995-09-01 and 2026-04-10).

Geography

Amazon Basin, South America (10° N to 25° S, 30° to 85° W).