NPP Boreal Forest: Schefferville Biomass and Climate, 1974

NPP Boreal Forest: Schefferville, Canada, 1974, R1 contains two text files from NASA. One provides detailed biomass, soil, and nutrient measurements from a 110-year-old black spruce/lichen woodland harvested in a 0.2 hectare plot during the 1974 growing season. The second file contains climate data (precipitation and temperature) from a nearby weather station for the period 1948-1990.

Use Cases

• Modeling boreal forest net primary productivity (NPP) using specific biomass measurements (2,636, 833, and 939 g/m2 for trees, shrubs, and lichen).
• Analyzing long-term climate trends in a subarctic region using the 1948-1990 precipitation and temperature time series.
• Studying soil nutrient content and biomass distribution in mature, fire-impacted boreal ecosystems.
• Calibrating or validating terrestrial ecosystem models (TEM) with field-measured biomass and NPP estimates (340 g/m2/yr).
• Comparing species composition and density from a principal plot against fifteen other plots to assess site typicality.

Strengths

• Contains direct field measurements from a harvested 0.2 hectare plot, providing specific biomass values for tree, shrub, and lichen components.
• Includes a long-term climate record (1948-1990) from a station 22 km from the study site, supporting temporal analysis.
• Data files have been checked for accuracy and are identical to the original 2001 publication, indicating consistency.

Limitations

• Column names and data structure are not provided, making precise interpretation of the tabular files difficult.
• Metadata conflicts exist: one platform lists a last updated date of 2026-04-09 (likely documentation only), while another lists 1990-10-31 for the data itself.
• The dataset's spatial scale is limited to a single study site near Schefferville, Canada.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Field harvest of trees, shrubs, and ground cover in a study plot; soil extraction; and analysis of plant and soil samples. Climate data from a weather station.

Time Range

1948-1990 for climate data; 1974 for biomass and nutrient data.

Freshness

Documentation was updated as of 2026-04-09, but the core data is from 1974 and 1948-1990, originally published in 2001.

Geography

Subarctic Picea mariana/lichen woodland near Schefferville, Canada (54.72 N, -67.70 W).