LUCAS LUC historical land use and land cover change dataset (Version 1.0)

• Main Authors: Hoffmann, Peter, Reinhart, Vanessa, Rechid, Diana
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: World Data Center for Climate (WDCC) at DKRZ 2021
• Subjects: Climate; LANDMATE; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.26050/wdcc/luc_hist_landcovchange_v1.0; http://cera-www.dkrz.de/WDCC/ui/Compact.jsp?acronym=LUC_hist_landCovChange_v1.0

Project: Modelling human LAND surface modifications and its feedbacks on local and regional cliMATE - The project “Modelling human LAND surface modifications and its feedbacks on local and regional climate” (LANDMATE, https://www.hicss-hamburg.de/projects/landmate/index.php.en) is carried out within the framework of the Helmholtz Institute for Climate Service Science (HICSS), a cooperation between Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon and Universität Hamburg. Within LANDMATE, scientists from GERICS and the Institute of Geography (CEN, Universität Hamburg) investigate the direct biophysical effects of land use and land cover change on the local and regional climate. The overall objectives of this project are to: I) Better represent dynamic land use characteristics in a regional climate model, II) Include land management practices into a regional climate model, III) Quantify biophysical impacts of land use dynamics on regional climate variability and change in Europe in the frame of WCRP CORDEX Flagship Pilot Study “Land Use and Climate Across Scales” (LUCAS, https://ms.hereon.de/cordex_fps_lucas/). Summary: The LUCAS LUC historical dataset consists of annual land use and land cover maps from 1950 to 2015. 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-vegetated classes employing the method of Reinhart et al. (2021). 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. (2021). For each year, a map is provided that contains 16 fields. Each field holds the fraction the respective plant functional types and non-vegetated 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 EURO-CORDEX. Plant functional types and non-vegetated classes: 1 - Tropical broadleaf evergreen trees 2 - Tropical deciduous trees 3 - Temperate broadleaf evergreen trees 4 - Temperate deciduous trees 5 - Evergreen coniferous trees 6 - Deciduous coniferous trees 7 - Coniferous shrubs 8 - Deciduous shrubs 9 - C3 grass 10 - C4 grass 11 - Tundra 12 - Swamp 13 - Non-irrigated crops 14 - Irrigated crops 15 - Urban 16 - Bare