Modeled Forest Carbon Balance and Disturbance Maps for the Pacific Northwest

U.S. Pacific Northwest forests are analyzed through Biome-BGC modeled estimates of carbon stocks and fluxes from 1986 to 2010. The dataset includes mapped distributions of forest disturbances categorized by type (harvest, fire, pest/pathogen) and tabular summaries broken out by ownership and ecoregion. It was produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and includes supporting climate data for 1980-2010.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the impact of specific disturbance types (harvest, fire, pest) on regional carbon stocks using the mapped disturbance layers.
• Comparing carbon flux metrics like net ecosystem production (NEP) and net aboveground wood growth across different ownership categories.
• Correlating annual precipitation and temperature maps (1980-2010) with modeled carbon balance estimates for climate impact studies.
• Assessing aboveground wood mass stocks at the ecoregion scale for conservation or forestry assessments.

Strengths

• Provides a 25-year continuous time series (1986-2010) of modeled carbon data for a major forest region.
• Distinguishes forest disturbances by three specific types (harvest, fire, pest/pathogen), adding analytical depth.
• Includes cross-tabulated data by ownership and ecoregion, enabling comparative policy and ecological analysis.
• Cross-platform presence on Data.gov and NASA EarthData signals importance and validation.

Limitations

• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are unknown from all sources.
• Conflicting last updated dates exist between platforms (2011-12-31 on NASA vs. 2026-03-13 on Data.gov).
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without further details.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Biome-BGC ecosystem model outputs.

Time Range

1980-2010

Freshness

2026-03-13 00:04:11.117342

Geography

U.S. Pacific Northwest, USA