Tibetan Plateau Grassland Degradation with NPP Baselines, 2001-2100

33% of Tibetan Plateau grasslands have undergone degradation, with severity intensifying from west to east. This dataset provides gridded Net Primary Productivity (NPP) baselines and projections from 2001 to 2100 under four SSP scenarios, supporting assessments of anthropogenic-climatic feedbacks. The data was created by Tao Zhou using MODIS-derived NPP and Random Forest modeling, and was last updated in May 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling spatiotemporal dynamics of grassland degradation based on MODIS-derived NPP data.
• Projecting future grassland health under different climate scenarios (SSP1-2.6, etc.) based on future NPP baseline projections.
• Analyzing the relative contributions of grazing intensity and vapor pressure deficit as degradation drivers based on the described mechanisms.
• Identifying degradation hotspots for targeted restoration strategies based on the described spatial gradient from west to east.

Strengths

• Includes a high-fidelity NPP baseline model with reported R² = 0.99.
• Provides a long temporal scope with historical data from 2001-2023 and future projections to 2100.
• Covers the entire Tibetan Plateau with gridded spatial data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for some analytical methods.
• The dataset is relatively small at 25.6 MB, which may indicate aggregated or coarse-resolution data.

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Tao Zhou.

Collection Method

Integrates MODIS-derived Net Primary Productivity (NPP) with Random Forest modeling, coupling Climate Climax and Ecological Climax theories.

Time Range

Historical: 2001 to 2023. Future projections: 2021–2040, 2041–2060, 2061–2080, 2081–2100.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-19 16:51:31; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Tibetan Plateau.