LUCAS LUC historical land use and land cover change dataset for North America (Version 1.1)

Abstract

The LUCAS LUC historical dataset consists of annual land use and land cover maps from 1950 to 2015 for North America. It is based on land cover data from the LANDMATE PFT dataset that was generated from ESA-CCI LC data. The ESA-CCI LC land cover classes are converted into 16 plant functional types and non-vegetative classes employing the method of Reinhart et al. (2022). For version 1.1 of the LUCAS LUC dataset, the improved LANDMATE PFT map version 1.1 was employed. The land use change information from the Land-Use Harmonization Data Set version 2 (LUH2 v2h, Hurtt et al. 2020) were imposed using the land use translator developed by Hoffmann et al. (2023). For each year, a map is provided that contains 16 fields. Each field holds the fraction the respective plant functional types and non-vegetative classes in the total grid cell (0-1). The LUCAS LUC dataset was constructed within the HICSS project LANDMATE and the WCRP flagship pilot study LUCAS to meet the requirements of downscaling experiments within CORDEX.