PBL IMAGE 3.0 SSP Scenarios: Global Land Cover Projections from 1970 to 2100

IMAGE 3.0 is an ecological-environmental model framework that simulates the environmental impact of human activities worldwide. This dataset provides global categorical land cover areas at a 5 arcminute grid resolution for the period 1970 to 2100 in 5-year increments, under several Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios. The data is produced by the IMAGE team and published under a CC-BY license by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.

Use Cases

• Projecting long-term global land-use change patterns based on SSP scenario narratives.
• Analyzing the impact of climate mitigation policies on land cover based on the RCP and SPA policy scenarios.
• Modeling biodiversity and habitat loss under different socioeconomic development pathways.
• Calibrating or validating other environmental models using the grid-level land cover fractions.

Strengths

• Provides long-term projections from 1970 to 2100 in 5-year increments, enabling temporal trend analysis.
• Includes multiple SSP and RCP scenarios, allowing for comparative analysis of different policy and climate futures.
• Offers a high spatial resolution of 5 arcminutes for detailed geographical assessment.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

IMAGE team, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Collection Method

Output from the IMAGE 3.0 integrated assessment model.

Time Range

1970 to 2100

Freshness

null

Geography

Global