Amazon Basin Potential Vegetation Map at 5-Minute Resolution

Vegetation data provides a 5-minute resolution map of potential natural vegetation types for the Amazon Basin region. This subset of the Global Potential Vegetation data set, developed by Navin Ramankutty and Jon Foley, classifies land cover into 15 distinct vegetation types. It models the vegetation likely to exist in the absence of current human activities, synthesized from the DISCover land cover data set and the Haxeltine and Prentice (1996) vegetation model.

Use Cases

• Modeling regional carbon fluxes using the classified vegetation types.
• Assessing land use change impacts by comparing current land cover to potential vegetation.
• Calibrating Earth system models with spatially explicit vegetation data for the Amazon.
• Studying biosphere-atmosphere exchanges within the LBA experiment framework.

Strengths

• Data provides a specific regional subset for the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA).
• Map offers a high spatial resolution of 5-minutes for detailed regional analysis.
• Vegetation is classified into 15 distinct types, enabling granular ecological study.

Limitations

• Conflicting metadata: one source lists a last update in 1992, while others list 2026, creating uncertainty about data currency.
• The dataset models potential, not actual, vegetation, which may not reflect on-ground conditions.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and detailed column names are unavailable from the provided sources.

Provenance

Source

University of Wisconsin (Navin Ramankutty and Jon Foley), derived from DISCover and Haxeltine and Prentice (1996) data.

Collection Method

Synthesized from satellite-derived land cover data and a global vegetation model.

Freshness

2026-03-13 01:05:50.863136

Geography

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