Articles | Volume 17, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1101-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1101-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Data description paper
| 
17 Mar 2025
Data description paper |
| 17 Mar 2025
| 17 Mar 2025
Aboveground biomass dataset from SMOS L-band vegetation optical depth and reference maps
Simon Boitard
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Centre d'Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère, Univ. Toulouse, CNES/IRD/CNRS/INRAe, CESBIO, Toulouse, France
Arnaud Mialon
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Centre d'Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère, Univ. Toulouse, CNES/IRD/CNRS/INRAe, CESBIO, Toulouse, France
Stéphane Mermoz
GlobEO (Global Earth Observation), Toulouse, France
Nemesio J. Rodríguez-Fernández
Centre d'Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère, Univ. Toulouse, CNES/IRD/CNRS/INRAe, CESBIO, Toulouse, France
Philippe Richaume
Centre d'Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère, Univ. Toulouse, CNES/IRD/CNRS/INRAe, CESBIO, Toulouse, France
Julio César Salazar-Neira
Centre d'Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère, Univ. Toulouse, CNES/IRD/CNRS/INRAe, CESBIO, Toulouse, France
Stéphane Tarot
IFREMER, BP 70, 29280 Plouzané, France
Yann H. Kerr
Centre d'Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère, Univ. Toulouse, CNES/IRD/CNRS/INRAe, CESBIO, Toulouse, France
Related authors
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Kimmo Rautiainen, Manu Holmberg, Juval Cohen, Arnaud Mialon, Mike Schwank, Juha Lemmetyinen, Antonio de la Fuente, and Yann Kerr
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-68, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-68, 2025
Preprint under review for ESSD
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The SMOS Soil Freeze Thaw State product uses satellite data to monitor seasonal soil freezing and thawing globally, with a focus on high latitude regions. This is important for understanding greenhouse gas emissions, as frozen soil is associated with methane release. The product provides accurate data on key events such as the first day of soil freezing in autumn, helping scientists to study climate change, ecosystem dynamics and its impact on our planet.
Wolfgang Knorr, Matthew Williams, Tea Thum, Thomas Kaminski, Michael Voßbeck, Marko Scholze, Tristan Quaife, T. Luke Smallman, Susan C. Steele-Dunne, Mariette Vreugdenhil, Tim Green, Sönke Zaehle, Mika Aurela, Alexandre Bouvet, Emanuel Bueechi, Wouter Dorigo, Tarek S. El-Madany, Mirco Migliavacca, Marika Honkanen, Yann H. Kerr, Anna Kontu, Juha Lemmetyinen, Hannakaisa Lindqvist, Arnaud Mialon, Tuuli Miinalainen, Gaétan Pique, Amanda Ojasalo, Shaun Quegan, Peter J. Rayner, Pablo Reyes-Muñoz, Nemesio Rodríguez-Fernández, Mike Schwank, Jochem Verrelst, Songyan Zhu, Dirk Schüttemeyer, and Matthias Drusch
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2137–2159, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2137-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2137-2025, 2025
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When it comes to climate change, the land surface is where the vast majority of impacts happen. The task of monitoring those impacts across the globe is formidable and must necessarily rely on satellites – at a significant cost: the measurements are only indirect and require comprehensive physical understanding. We have created a comprehensive modelling system that we offer to the research community to explore how satellite data can be better exploited to help us capture the changes that happen on our lands.
Juliette Ortet, Arnaud Mialon, Alain Royer, Mike Schwank, Manu Holmberg, Kimmo Rautiainen, Simone Bircher-Adrot, Andreas Colliander, Yann Kerr, and Alexandre Roy
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3963, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3963, 2025
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We propose a new method to determine the ground surface temperature under the snowpack in the Arctic area from satellite observations. The obtained ground temperatures time series were evaluated over 21 reference sites in Northern Alaska and compared with ground temperatures obtained with global models. The method is excessively promising for monitoring ground temperature below the snowpack and studying the spatiotemporal variability thanks to 15 years of observations over the whole Arctic area.
Marta Bottani, Laurent Ferro-Famil, Juan Doblas, Stéphane Mermoz, Alexandre Bouvet, and Thierry Koleck
Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XLVIII-3-2024, 43–49, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-2024-43-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-2024-43-2024, 2024
Juan Doblas, Mariane Souza Reis, Stéphane Mermoz, Claudio Aparecido Almeida, Thierry Koleck, Cassiano Gustavo Messias, Luciana Soler, Alexandre Bouvet, and Sidnei J. S. Sant’Anna
Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XLVIII-3-2024, 127–133, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-2024-127-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-2024-127-2024, 2024
Thuy Le Toan, Ludovic Villard, Dinh Ho Tong Minh, Juan Doblas, Stephane Mermoz, Laurent Ferro-Famil, Thierry Koleck, Alexandre Bouvet, Milena Planells, and Laurent Polidori
Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XLVIII-3-2024, 287–293, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-2024-287-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-2024-287-2024, 2024
Remi Madelon, Nemesio J. Rodríguez-Fernández, Hassan Bazzi, Nicolas Baghdadi, Clement Albergel, Wouter Dorigo, and Mehrez Zribi
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 1221–1242, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1221-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1221-2023, 2023
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We present an approach to estimate soil moisture (SM) at 1 km resolution using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-3 satellites. The estimates were compared to other high-resolution (HR) datasets over Europe, northern Africa, Australia, and North America, showing good agreement. However, the discrepancies between the different HR datasets and their lower performances compared with in situ measurements and coarse-resolution datasets show the remaining challenges for large-scale HR SM mapping.
Emma Bousquet, Arnaud Mialon, Nemesio Rodriguez-Fernandez, Stéphane Mermoz, and Yann Kerr
Biogeosciences, 19, 3317–3336, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-3317-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-3317-2022, 2022
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Pre- and post-fire values of four climate variables and four vegetation variables were analysed at the global scale, in order to observe (i) the general fire likelihood factors and (ii) the vegetation recovery trends over various biomes. The main result of this study is that L-band vegetation optical depth (L-VOD) is the most impacted vegetation variable and takes the longest to recover over dense forests. L-VOD could then be useful for post-fire vegetation recovery studies.
Guillaume Marie, B. Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Cecile Dardel, Thuy Le Toan, Alexandre Bouvet, Stéphane Mermoz, Ludovic Villard, Vladislav Bastrikov, and Philippe Peylin
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2599–2617, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2599-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2599-2022, 2022
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Most Earth system models make use of vegetation maps to initialize a simulation at global scale. Satellite-based biomass map estimates for Africa were used to estimate cover fractions for the 15 land cover classes. This study successfully demonstrates that satellite-based biomass maps can be used to better constrain vegetation maps. Applying this approach at the global scale would increase confidence in assessments of present-day biomass stocks.
Heye Reemt Bogena, Martin Schrön, Jannis Jakobi, Patrizia Ney, Steffen Zacharias, Mie Andreasen, Roland Baatz, David Boorman, Mustafa Berk Duygu, Miguel Angel Eguibar-Galán, Benjamin Fersch, Till Franke, Josie Geris, María González Sanchis, Yann Kerr, Tobias Korf, Zalalem Mengistu, Arnaud Mialon, Paolo Nasta, Jerzy Nitychoruk, Vassilios Pisinaras, Daniel Rasche, Rafael Rosolem, Hami Said, Paul Schattan, Marek Zreda, Stefan Achleitner, Eduardo Albentosa-Hernández, Zuhal Akyürek, Theresa Blume, Antonio del Campo, Davide Canone, Katya Dimitrova-Petrova, John G. Evans, Stefano Ferraris, Félix Frances, Davide Gisolo, Andreas Güntner, Frank Herrmann, Joost Iwema, Karsten H. Jensen, Harald Kunstmann, Antonio Lidón, Majken Caroline Looms, Sascha Oswald, Andreas Panagopoulos, Amol Patil, Daniel Power, Corinna Rebmann, Nunzio Romano, Lena Scheiffele, Sonia Seneviratne, Georg Weltin, and Harry Vereecken
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 1125–1151, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1125-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1125-2022, 2022
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Monitoring of increasingly frequent droughts is a prerequisite for climate adaptation strategies. This data paper presents long-term soil moisture measurements recorded by 66 cosmic-ray neutron sensors (CRNS) operated by 24 institutions and distributed across major climate zones in Europe. Data processing followed harmonized protocols and state-of-the-art methods to generate consistent and comparable soil moisture products and to facilitate continental-scale analysis of hydrological extremes.
Joaquín Muñoz-Sabater, Emanuel Dutra, Anna Agustí-Panareda, Clément Albergel, Gabriele Arduini, Gianpaolo Balsamo, Souhail Boussetta, Margarita Choulga, Shaun Harrigan, Hans Hersbach, Brecht Martens, Diego G. Miralles, María Piles, Nemesio J. Rodríguez-Fernández, Ervin Zsoter, Carlo Buontempo, and Jean-Noël Thépaut
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 4349–4383, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4349-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4349-2021, 2021
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The creation of ERA5-Land responds to a growing number of applications requiring global land datasets at a resolution higher than traditionally reached. ERA5-Land provides operational, global, and hourly key variables of the water and energy cycles over land surfaces, at 9 km resolution, from 1981 until the present. This work provides evidence of an overall improvement of the water cycle compared to previous reanalyses, whereas the energy cycle variables perform as well as those of ERA5.
Bjorn Stevens, Sandrine Bony, David Farrell, Felix Ament, Alan Blyth, Christopher Fairall, Johannes Karstensen, Patricia K. Quinn, Sabrina Speich, Claudia Acquistapace, Franziska Aemisegger, Anna Lea Albright, Hugo Bellenger, Eberhard Bodenschatz, Kathy-Ann Caesar, Rebecca Chewitt-Lucas, Gijs de Boer, Julien Delanoë, Leif Denby, Florian Ewald, Benjamin Fildier, Marvin Forde, Geet George, Silke Gross, Martin Hagen, Andrea Hausold, Karen J. Heywood, Lutz Hirsch, Marek Jacob, Friedhelm Jansen, Stefan Kinne, Daniel Klocke, Tobias Kölling, Heike Konow, Marie Lothon, Wiebke Mohr, Ann Kristin Naumann, Louise Nuijens, Léa Olivier, Robert Pincus, Mira Pöhlker, Gilles Reverdin, Gregory Roberts, Sabrina Schnitt, Hauke Schulz, A. Pier Siebesma, Claudia Christine Stephan, Peter Sullivan, Ludovic Touzé-Peiffer, Jessica Vial, Raphaela Vogel, Paquita Zuidema, Nicola Alexander, Lyndon Alves, Sophian Arixi, Hamish Asmath, Gholamhossein Bagheri, Katharina Baier, Adriana Bailey, Dariusz Baranowski, Alexandre Baron, Sébastien Barrau, Paul A. Barrett, Frédéric Batier, Andreas Behrendt, Arne Bendinger, Florent Beucher, Sebastien Bigorre, Edmund Blades, Peter Blossey, Olivier Bock, Steven Böing, Pierre Bosser, Denis Bourras, Pascale Bouruet-Aubertot, Keith Bower, Pierre Branellec, Hubert Branger, Michal Brennek, Alan Brewer, Pierre-Etienne Brilouet, Björn Brügmann, Stefan A. Buehler, Elmo Burke, Ralph Burton, Radiance Calmer, Jean-Christophe Canonici, Xavier Carton, Gregory Cato Jr., Jude Andre Charles, Patrick Chazette, Yanxu Chen, Michal T. Chilinski, Thomas Choularton, Patrick Chuang, Shamal Clarke, Hugh Coe, Céline Cornet, Pierre Coutris, Fleur Couvreux, Susanne Crewell, Timothy Cronin, Zhiqiang Cui, Yannis Cuypers, Alton Daley, Gillian M. Damerell, Thibaut Dauhut, Hartwig Deneke, Jean-Philippe Desbios, Steffen Dörner, Sebastian Donner, Vincent Douet, Kyla Drushka, Marina Dütsch, André Ehrlich, Kerry Emanuel, Alexandros Emmanouilidis, Jean-Claude Etienne, Sheryl Etienne-Leblanc, Ghislain Faure, Graham Feingold, Luca Ferrero, Andreas Fix, Cyrille Flamant, Piotr Jacek Flatau, Gregory R. Foltz, Linda Forster, Iulian Furtuna, Alan Gadian, Joseph Galewsky, Martin Gallagher, Peter Gallimore, Cassandra Gaston, Chelle Gentemann, Nicolas Geyskens, Andreas Giez, John Gollop, Isabelle Gouirand, Christophe Gourbeyre, Dörte de Graaf, Geiske E. de Groot, Robert Grosz, Johannes Güttler, Manuel Gutleben, Kashawn Hall, George Harris, Kevin C. Helfer, Dean Henze, Calvert Herbert, Bruna Holanda, Antonio Ibanez-Landeta, Janet Intrieri, Suneil Iyer, Fabrice Julien, Heike Kalesse, Jan Kazil, Alexander Kellman, Abiel T. Kidane, Ulrike Kirchner, Marcus Klingebiel, Mareike Körner, Leslie Ann Kremper, Jan Kretzschmar, Ovid Krüger, Wojciech Kumala, Armin Kurz, Pierre L'Hégaret, Matthieu Labaste, Tom Lachlan-Cope, Arlene Laing, Peter Landschützer, Theresa Lang, Diego Lange, Ingo Lange, Clément Laplace, Gauke Lavik, Rémi Laxenaire, Caroline Le Bihan, Mason Leandro, Nathalie Lefevre, Marius Lena, Donald Lenschow, Qiang Li, Gary Lloyd, Sebastian Los, Niccolò Losi, Oscar Lovell, Christopher Luneau, Przemyslaw Makuch, Szymon Malinowski, Gaston Manta, Eleni Marinou, Nicholas Marsden, Sebastien Masson, Nicolas Maury, Bernhard Mayer, Margarette Mayers-Als, Christophe Mazel, Wayne McGeary, James C. McWilliams, Mario Mech, Melina Mehlmann, Agostino Niyonkuru Meroni, Theresa Mieslinger, Andreas Minikin, Peter Minnett, Gregor Möller, Yanmichel Morfa Avalos, Caroline Muller, Ionela Musat, Anna Napoli, Almuth Neuberger, Christophe Noisel, David Noone, Freja Nordsiek, Jakub L. Nowak, Lothar Oswald, Douglas J. Parker, Carolyn Peck, Renaud Person, Miriam Philippi, Albert Plueddemann, Christopher Pöhlker, Veronika Pörtge, Ulrich Pöschl, Lawrence Pologne, Michał Posyniak, Marc Prange, Estefanía Quiñones Meléndez, Jule Radtke, Karim Ramage, Jens Reimann, Lionel Renault, Klaus Reus, Ashford Reyes, Joachim Ribbe, Maximilian Ringel, Markus Ritschel, Cesar B. Rocha, Nicolas Rochetin, Johannes Röttenbacher, Callum Rollo, Haley Royer, Pauline Sadoulet, Leo Saffin, Sanola Sandiford, Irina Sandu, Michael Schäfer, Vera Schemann, Imke Schirmacher, Oliver Schlenczek, Jerome Schmidt, Marcel Schröder, Alfons Schwarzenboeck, Andrea Sealy, Christoph J. Senff, Ilya Serikov, Samkeyat Shohan, Elizabeth Siddle, Alexander Smirnov, Florian Späth, Branden Spooner, M. Katharina Stolla, Wojciech Szkółka, Simon P. de Szoeke, Stéphane Tarot, Eleni Tetoni, Elizabeth Thompson, Jim Thomson, Lorenzo Tomassini, Julien Totems, Alma Anna Ubele, Leonie Villiger, Jan von Arx, Thomas Wagner, Andi Walther, Ben Webber, Manfred Wendisch, Shanice Whitehall, Anton Wiltshire, Allison A. Wing, Martin Wirth, Jonathan Wiskandt, Kevin Wolf, Ludwig Worbes, Ethan Wright, Volker Wulfmeyer, Shanea Young, Chidong Zhang, Dongxiao Zhang, Florian Ziemen, Tobias Zinner, and Martin Zöger
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 4067–4119, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4067-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4067-2021, 2021
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The EUREC4A field campaign, designed to test hypothesized mechanisms by which clouds respond to warming and benchmark next-generation Earth-system models, is presented. EUREC4A comprised roughly 5 weeks of measurements in the downstream winter trades of the North Atlantic – eastward and southeastward of Barbados. It was the first campaign that attempted to characterize the full range of processes and scales influencing trade wind clouds.
Clément Albergel, Yongjun Zheng, Bertrand Bonan, Emanuel Dutra, Nemesio Rodríguez-Fernández, Simon Munier, Clara Draper, Patricia de Rosnay, Joaquin Muñoz-Sabater, Gianpaolo Balsamo, David Fairbairn, Catherine Meurey, and Jean-Christophe Calvet
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 4291–4316, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-4291-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-4291-2020, 2020
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LDAS-Monde is a global offline land data assimilation system (LDAS) that jointly assimilates satellite-derived observations of surface soil moisture (SSM) and leaf area index (LAI) into the ISBA (Interaction between Soil Biosphere and Atmosphere) land surface model (LSM). This study demonstrates that LDAS-Monde is able to detect, monitor and forecast the impact of extreme weather on land surface states.
Christian Massari, Luca Brocca, Thierry Pellarin, Gab Abramowitz, Paolo Filippucci, Luca Ciabatta, Viviana Maggioni, Yann Kerr, and Diego Fernandez Prieto
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 2687–2710, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2687-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2687-2020, 2020
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Rain gauges are unevenly spaced around the world with extremely low gauge density over places like Africa and South America. Here, water-related problems like floods, drought and famine are particularly severe and able to cause fatalities, migration and diseases. We have developed a rainfall dataset that exploits the synergies between rainfall and soil moisture to provide accurate rainfall observations which can be used to face these problems.
Marion Leduc-Leballeur, Ghislain Picard, Giovanni Macelloni, Arnaud Mialon, and Yann H. Kerr
The Cryosphere, 14, 539–548, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-539-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-539-2020, 2020
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To study the coast and ice shelves affected by melt in Antarctica during the austral summer, we exploited the 1.4 GHz radiometric satellite observations. We showed that this frequency provides additional information on melt occurrence and on the location of the water in the snowpack compared to the 19 GHz observations. This opens an avenue for improving the melting season monitoring with a combination of both frequencies and exploring the possibility of deep-water detection in the snowpack.
S. Ferrant, A. Selles, M. Le Page, A. AlBitar, S. Mermoz, S. Gascoin, A. Bouvet, S. Ahmed, and Y. Kerr
Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XLII-3-W6, 285–292, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-3-W6-285-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-3-W6-285-2019, 2019
Nemesio J. Rodríguez-Fernández, Arnaud Mialon, Stephane Mermoz, Alexandre Bouvet, Philippe Richaume, Ahmad Al Bitar, Amen Al-Yaari, Martin Brandt, Thomas Kaminski, Thuy Le Toan, Yann H. Kerr, and Jean-Pierre Wigneron
Biogeosciences, 15, 4627–4645, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4627-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4627-2018, 2018
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Existing global scale above-ground biomass (AGB) maps are made at very high spatial resolution collecting data during several years. In this paper we discuss the use of a new data set from the SMOS satellite: the vegetation optical depth estimated from low microwave frequencies. It is shown that this new data set is highly sensitive to AGB. The spacial resolution of SMOS is coarse (40 km) but the new data set can be used to monitor AGB variations with time due to its high revisit frequency.
Nemesio J. Rodríguez-Fernández, Joaquin Muñoz Sabater, Philippe Richaume, Patricia de Rosnay, Yann H. Kerr, Clement Albergel, Matthias Drusch, and Susanne Mecklenburg
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 5201–5216, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-5201-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-5201-2017, 2017
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The new SMOS satellite near-real-time (NRT) soil moisture (SM) product based on a neural network is presented. The NRT SM product has been evaluated with respect to the SMOS Level 2 product and against a large number of in situ measurements showing performances similar to those of the Level 2 product but it is available in less than 3.5 h after sensing. The new product is distributed by the European Space Agency and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
Ahmad Al Bitar, Arnaud Mialon, Yann H. Kerr, François Cabot, Philippe Richaume, Elsa Jacquette, Arnaud Quesney, Ali Mahmoodi, Stéphane Tarot, Marie Parrens, Amen Al-Yaari, Thierry Pellarin, Nemesio Rodriguez-Fernandez, and Jean-Pierre Wigneron
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 9, 293–315, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-9-293-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-9-293-2017, 2017
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Surface soil moisture is a control variable for many processes linked to the water and carbon cycles. The global maps of soil moisture and brightness temperature using multiple orbits from the SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission are presented in this paper. The maps showed an increased number of retrievals over forest areas (9 %) compared to single-orbit retrievals. The brightness temperature observations from the L-band missions SMOS (ESA) and SMAP (NASA) are close (bias < −4 K).
Simone Bircher, Mie Andreasen, Johanna Vuollet, Juho Vehviläinen, Kimmo Rautiainen, François Jonard, Lutz Weihermüller, Elena Zakharova, Jean-Pierre Wigneron, and Yann H. Kerr
Geosci. Instrum. Method. Data Syst., 5, 109–125, https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-5-109-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-5-109-2016, 2016
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At the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Sodankylä and the Danish Center for Hydrology, calibration functions for organic surface layers were derived for two in situ soil moisture sensors to be used in the validation of coarse-resolution soil moisture from satellites and land surface models. There was no clear difference in the data from a variety of humus types, strengthening confidence that these calibrations are applicable over a wide range of conditions as encountered in the large areas.
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David A. Gibbs, Melissa Rose, Giacomo Grassi, Joana Melo, Simone Rossi, Viola Heinrich, and Nancy L. Harris
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 1217–1243, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1217-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1217-2025, 2025
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Updated global maps of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sequestration by forests from 2001 onwards using satellite-derived data show that forests are strong net carbon sinks, capturing about as much CO2 each year on average as the USA emitted from fossil fuels in 2019. After reclassifying fluxes to countries’ reporting categories for national GHG inventories, we found that roughly two-thirds of the net CO2 flux from forests is anthropogenic and one-third is non-anthropogenic.
Zhenghang Yuan, Zhitong Xiong, Lichao Mou, and Xiao Xiang Zhu
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 1245–1263, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1245-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1245-2025, 2025
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ChatEarthNet is an image–text dataset that provides high-quality, detailed natural language descriptions for global-scale satellite data. It consists of 163 488 image-text pairs with captions generated by ChatGPT-3.5 and an additional 10 000 image-text pairs with captions generated by ChatGPT-4V(ision). This dataset has significant potential for training and evaluating vision–language geo-foundation models in remote sensing.
Fuyou Tian, Bingfang Wu, Hongwei Zeng, Miao Zhang, Weiwei Zhu, Nana Yan, Yuming Lu, and Yifan Li
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 855–880, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-855-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-855-2025, 2025
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Our study introduces GMIE, a high-resolution global map of irrigated cropland at 100 m resolution, covering 403.17 Mha and utilizing irrigation performance under drought stress. We found that 23.4 % of global cropland is irrigated, with the most extensive areas in India, China, the United States, and Pakistan. We identified the distribution of central pivot systems commonly used in the United States and Saudi Arabia. This new map can better support water management and food security globally.
Guangsheng Zhou, Hongrui Ren, Lei Zhang, Xiaomin Lv, and Mengzi Zhou
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 773–797, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-773-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-773-2025, 2025
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This study developed a new approach to long-time continuous annual vegetation mapping from remote sensing imagery, and mapped the vegetation of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) from 2000 to 2022 using the MOD09A1 product. The overall accuracy of continuous annual QTP vegetation mapping reached 83.3%, with the reference annual 2020 data reaching an accuracy of 83.3% and a kappa coefficient of 0.82. The study supports the use of remote sensing data to mapping long-time continuous annual vegetation.
Xuemeng Tian, Davide Consoli, Martijn Witjes, Florian Schneider, Leandro Parente, Murat Şahin, Yu-Feng Ho, Robert Minařík, and Tomislav Hengl
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 741–772, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-741-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-741-2025, 2025
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Our study introduces a Landsat-based data cube simplifying access to detailed environmental data across Europe from 2000 to 2022, covering vegetation, water, soil, and crops. Our experiments demonstrate its effectiveness in developing environmental models and maps. Tailored feature selection is crucial for its effective use in environmental modeling. It aims to support comprehensive environmental monitoring and analysis, helping researchers and policy-makers in managing environmental resources.
Mingyang Song, Lu Xu, Ji Ge, Hong Zhang, Lijun Zuo, Jingling Jiang, Yinhaibin Ding, Yazhe Xie, and Fan Wu
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 661–683, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-661-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-661-2025, 2025
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We created a 10 m resolution rice distribution map for East Asia in 2023 (EARice10), achieving an overall accuracy (OA) of 90.48 % on validation samples. EARice10 shows strong consistency with statistical data (coefficient of determination, R2: 0.94–0.98) and existing datasets (R2: 0.79–0.98). It is the most up-to-date map, covering the four major rice-producing countries in East Asia at 10 m resolution.
Maximilian Freudenberg, Sebastian Schnell, and Paul Magdon
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 351–367, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-351-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-351-2025, 2025
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Classifying tree species in satellite images is an important task for environmental monitoring and forest management. Here we present a dataset containing Sentinel-2 satellite pixel time series of individual trees intended for training machine learning models. The dataset was created by merging information from the German National Forest Inventory in 2012 with satellite data. It sparsely covers the whole of Germany for the years 2015 to 2022 and comprises 48 species and 3 species groups.
Yangyang Fu, Xiuzhi Chen, Chaoqing Song, Xiaojuan Huang, Jie Dong, Qiongyan Peng, and Wenping Yuan
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 95–115, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-95-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-95-2025, 2025
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This study proposed the Winter-Triticeae Crops Index (WTCI), which had great performance and stable spatiotemporal transferability in identifying winter-triticeae crops in 66 countries worldwide, with an overall accuracy of 87.7 %. The first global 30 m resolution distribution maps of winter-triticeae crops from 2017 to 2022 were further produced based on the WTCI method. The product can serve as an important basis for agricultural applications.
Jiahao Shi, Hua Yuan, Wanyi Lin, Wenzong Dong, Hongbin Liang, Zhuo Liu, Jianxin Zeng, Haolin Zhang, Nan Wei, Zhongwang Wei, Shupeng Zhang, Shaofeng Liu, Xingjie Lu, and Yongjiu Dai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 117–134, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-117-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-117-2025, 2025
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Flux tower data are widely recognized as benchmarking data for land surface models, but insufficient emphasis on and deficiency in site attribute data limits their true value. We collect site-observed vegetation, soil, and topography data from various sources. The final dataset encompasses 90 sites globally, with relatively complete site attribute data and high-quality flux validation data. This work has provided more reliable site attribute data, benefiting land surface model development.
Binghong Han, Jian Bi, Shengli Tao, Tong Yang, Yongli Tang, Mengshuai Ge, Hao Wang, Zhenong Jin, Jinwei Dong, Zhibiao Nan, and Jin-Sheng He
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-620, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-620, 2025
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
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The Tibetan Plateau is an important pastoral area where cultivated pastures play an increasingly important role. However, little is known about the spatial distribution of the cultivated pasture due to the difficulty in distinguishing them from natural grasslands with remote sensing. For the first time, we have mapped the cultivated pastures on the plateau at a resolution of 30 meters with decent accuracy. This data set is valuable to scientists, policy makers, conservationists and pastoralists.
Raphaël d'Andrimont, Momchil Yordanov, Fernando Sedano, Astrid Verhegghen, Peter Strobl, Savvas Zachariadis, Flavia Camilleri, Alessandra Palmieri, Beatrice Eiselt, Jose Miguel Rubio Iglesias, and Marijn van der Velde
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 5723–5735, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5723-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5723-2024, 2024
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The Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS) Copernicus 2022 is a large and systematic in situ field survey of 137 966 polygons over the European Union in 2022. The data contain 82 land cover classes and 40 land use classes.
Ruoque Shen, Qiongyan Peng, Xiangqian Li, Xiuzhi Chen, and Wenping Yuan
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-584, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-584, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
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Rice is a vital staple crop that plays a crucial role in food security in China. However, long-term high-resolution rice distribution maps in China are lacking. This study developed a new rice mapping method using to address the challenges of cloud contamination and missing data in optical remote sensing observations. The resulting dataset, CCD-Rice (China Crop Dataset-Rice), achieved high accuracy and showed strong correlation with statistical data.
Shuang Chen, Jie Wang, Qiang Liu, Xiangan Liang, Rui Liu, Peng Qin, Jincheng Yuan, Junbo Wei, Shuai Yuan, Huabing Huang, and Peng Gong
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 5449–5475, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5449-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5449-2024, 2024
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The inconsistent coverage of Landsat data due to its long revisit intervals and frequent cloud cover poses challenges to large-scale land monitoring. We developed a global 30 m 23-year (2000–2022) daily seamless data cube (SDC) of surface reflectance based on Landsat 5, 7, 8, and 9 and MODIS products. The SDC exhibits enhanced capabilities for monitoring land cover changes and robust consistency in both spatial and temporal dimensions, which are important for global environmental monitoring.
Gerardo E. Soto, Steven W. Wilcox, Patrick E. Clark, Francesco P. Fava, Nathaniel D. Jensen, Njoki Kahiu, Chuan Liao, Benjamin Porter, Ying Sun, and Christopher B. Barrett
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 5375–5404, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5375-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5375-2024, 2024
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This paper uses machine learning and linear unmixing to produce rangeland health indicators: Landsat time series of land cover classes and vegetation fractional cover of photosynthetic vegetation, non-photosynthetic vegetation, and bare ground in arid and semi-arid Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. This represents the first multi-decadal Landsat-resolution dataset specifically designed for mapping and monitoring rangeland health in the arid and semi-arid rangelands of this portion of eastern Africa.
Yangzi Che, Xuecao Li, Xiaoping Liu, Yuhao Wang, Weilin Liao, Xianwei Zheng, Xucai Zhang, Xiaocong Xu, Qian Shi, Jiajun Zhu, Honghui Zhang, Hua Yuan, and Yongjiu Dai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 5357–5374, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5357-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5357-2024, 2024
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Most existing building height products are limited with respect to either spatial resolution or coverage, not to mention the spatial heterogeneity introduced by global building forms. Using Earth Observation (EO) datasets for 2020, we developed a global height dataset at the individual building scale. The dataset provides spatially explicit information on 3D building morphology, supporting both macro- and microanalysis of urban areas.
Yuling Chen, Haitao Yang, Zekun Yang, Qiuli Yang, Weiyan Liu, Guoran Huang, Yu Ren, Kai Cheng, Tianyu Xiang, Mengxi Chen, Danyang Lin, Zhiyong Qi, Jiachen Xu, Yixuan Zhang, Guangcai Xu, and Qinghua Guo
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 5267–5285, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5267-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5267-2024, 2024
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The national-scale continuous maps of arithmetic mean height and weighted mean height across China address the challenges of accurately estimating forest stand mean height using a tree-based approach. These maps produced in this study provide critical datasets for forest sustainable management in China, including climate change mitigation (e.g., terrestrial carbon estimation), forest ecosystem assessment, and forest inventory practices.
Jia Zhou, Jin Niu, Ning Wu, and Tao Lu
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 5171–5189, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5171-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5171-2024, 2024
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The study provided an annual 100 m resolution glimpse into the grazing activities across the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. The newly minted Gridded Dataset of Grazing Intensity (GDGI) not only boasts exceptional accuracy but also acts as a pivotal resource for further research and strategic planning, with the potential to shape sustainable grazing practices, guide informed environmental stewardship, and ensure the longevity of the region’s precious ecosystems.
Adrià Descals, David L. A. Gaveau, Serge Wich, Zoltan Szantoi, and Erik Meijaard
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 5111–5129, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5111-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-5111-2024, 2024
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This study provides a 10 m global oil palm extent layer for 2021 and a 30 m oil palm planting-year layer from 1990 to 2021. The oil palm extent layer was produced using a convolutional neural network that identified industrial and smallholder plantations using Sentinel-1 data. The oil palm planting year was developed using a methodology specifically designed to detect the early stages of oil palm development in the Landsat time series.
Ran Jia, Xiuqi Fang, Yundi Yang, Masayuki Yokozawa, and Yu Ye
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 4971–4994, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4971-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4971-2024, 2024
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We reconstructed a cropland area change dataset in Northeast China over the past millennium by integrating multisource data with a unified standard using the historical and archaeological record, statistical yearbook, and national land survey. Cropland in Northeast China exhibited phases of expansion–reduction–expansion over the past millennium. This dataset can be used for improving the land use and land cover change (LUCC) dataset and assessing LUCC-induced carbon emission and climate change.
Stefania Di Tommaso, Sherrie Wang, Rob Strey, and David B. Lobell
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 4931–4947, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4931-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4931-2024, 2024
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Sugarcane plays a vital role in food, biofuel, and farmer income globally, yet its cultivation faces numerous social and environmental challenges. Despite its significance, accurate mapping remains limited. Our study addresses this gap by introducing a novel 10 m global dataset of sugarcane maps spanning 2019–2022. Comparisons with field data, pre-existing maps, and official government statistics all indicate the high precision and high recall of our maps.
Weilin Liao, Yanman Li, Xiaoping Liu, Yuhao Wang, Yangzi Che, Ledi Shao, Guangzhao Chen, Hua Yuan, Ning Zhang, and Fei Chen
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-408, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-408, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
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The currently available urban canopy parameter (UCP) datasets are limited to just a few cities for urban climate simulations by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. To address this gap, we develop a global 1 km spatially continuous UCP dataset (GloUCP), which provides superior spatial coverage and higher accuracy in capturing urban morphology across diverse regions. It has great potential to support further advancements in urban climate modeling and related applications.
Juliette Bernard, Catherine Prigent, Carlos Jimenez, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Bernhard Lehner, Elodie Salmon, Philippe Ciais, Zhen Zhang, Shushi Peng, and Marielle Saunois
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-466, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-466, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
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Wetlands are responsible for about a third of global emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. We have developed the GIEMS-MethaneCentric (GIEMS-MC) dataset to represent the dynamics of wetland extent on a global scale (0.25°x0.25° resolution, monthly time step). This updated resource combines satellite data and existing wetland databases, covering 1992 to 2020. Consistent maps of other methane-emitting surface waters (lakes, rivers, reservoirs, rice paddies) are also provided.
Jie Wang, Xiangming Xiao, Yuanwei Qin, Jinwei Dong, Geli Zhang, Xuebin Yang, Xiaocui Wu, Chandrashekhar Biradar, and Yang Hu
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 4619–4639, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4619-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4619-2024, 2024
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Existing satellite-based forest maps have large uncertainties due to different forest definitions and mapping algorithms. To effectively manage forest resources, timely and accurate annual forest maps at a high spatial resolution are needed. This study improved forest maps by integrating PALSAR-2 and Landsat images. Annual evergreen and non-evergreen forest-type maps were also generated. This critical information supports the Global Forest Resources Assessment.
Yifan Cheng, Lei Zhao, Tirthankar Chakraborty, Keith Oleson, Matthias Demuzere, Xiaoping Liu, Yangzi Che, Weilin Liao, Yuyu Zhou, and Xinchang Li
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-416, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-416, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
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Absence of globally consistent and spatially continuous urban surface properties have long prevented large-scale high-resolution urban climate modeling. We developed the U-Surf data, a 1km-resolution dataset that provides key urban surface properties worldwide. U-Surf enhances urban representation in models, enables city-to-city comparison, and supports kilometer-scale Earth system modeling. Its broader applications can be extended to machine learning and many other non-climatic practices.
Jingling Jiang, Hong Zhang, Ji Ge, Lijun Zuo, Lu Xu, Minyang Song, Yinhaibin Ding, Yazhe Xie, and Wenjiang Huang
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-402, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-402, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
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This study employs temporal SAR data and optical imagery to conduct rice extraction experiments in 34 African countries with annual rice planting areas exceeding 5,000 hectares, achieving 20-meter resolution spatial distribution mapping of rice in Africa for 2023. The average classification accuracy on the validation set exceeded 85 %, and the R² values for linear fitting with existing statistical data all surpassed 0.9, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed mapping method.
Xin Zhao, Kazuya Nishina, Haruka Izumisawa, Yuji Masutomi, Seima Osako, and Shuhei Yamamoto
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 3893–3911, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3893-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3893-2024, 2024
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Mapping a rice calendar in a spatially explicit manner with a consistent framework remains challenging at a global or continental scale. We successfully developed a new gridded rice calendar for monsoon Asia based on Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 images, which characterize transplanting and harvesting dates and the number of rice croppings in a comprehensive framework. Our rice calendar will be beneficial for rice management, production prediction, and the estimation of greenhouse gas emissions.
Yuehong Chen, Congcong Xu, Yong Ge, Xiaoxiang Zhang, and Ya'nan Zhou
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 3705–3718, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3705-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3705-2024, 2024
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Population data is crucial for human–nature interactions. Gridded population data can address limitations of census data in irregular units. In China, rapid urbanization necessitates timely and accurate population grids. However, existing datasets for China are either outdated or lack recent census data. Hence, a novel approach was developed to disaggregate China’s seventh census data into 100 m population grids. The resulting dataset outperformed the existing LandScan and WorldPop datasets.
Zia Mehrabi, Kaitai Tong, Julie Fortin, Radost Stanimirova, Mark Friedl, and Navin Ramankutty
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-279, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-279, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
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We present a global geospatial database of cropland and pastures representing the year 2015. We made it using machine learning models to merge satellite-based land cover data with agricultural census data that we compiled. This database is an update to an earlier version representing the year 2000. It can be used to study issues such as land use, food security, climate change and biodiversity loss. We provide a reproducible code base to easily update the product for future years.
Michael MacFerrin, Christopher Amante, Kelly Carignan, Matthew Love, and Elliot Lim
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-250, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-250, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
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Here we present Earth TOPOgraphy (ETOPO) 2022, the latest iteration of NOAA’s global, seamless topographic-bathymetric dataset. ETOPO 2022 is a significant upgrade in resolution and accuracy from previous ETOPO releases, freely available in multiple data formats and resolutions for all uses (public or private), excepting navigation.
Shuchao Ye, Peiyu Cao, and Chaoqun Lu
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 3453–3470, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3453-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3453-2024, 2024
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We reconstructed annual cropland density and crop type maps, including nine major crop types (corn, soybean, winter wheat, spring wheat, durum wheat, cotton, sorghum, barley, and rice), from 1850 to 2021 at 1 km × 1 km resolution. We found that the US total crop acreage has increased by 118 × 106 ha (118 Mha), mainly driven by corn (30 Mha) and soybean (35 Mha). Additionally, the US cropping diversity experienced an increase in the 1850s–1960s, followed by a decline over the past 6 decades.
Fang Chen, Lei Wang, Yu Wang, Haiying Zhang, Ning Wang, Pengfei Ma, and Bo Yu
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 3369–3382, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3369-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3369-2024, 2024
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Storage tanks are responsible for approximately 25 % of CH4 emissions in the atmosphere, exacerbating climate warming. Currently there is no publicly accessible storage tank inventory. We generated the first high-spatial-resolution (1–2 m) storage tank dataset (STD) over 92 typical cities in China in 2021, totaling 14 461 storage tanks with the construction year from 2000–2021. It shows significant agreement with CH4 emission spatially and temporally, promoting the CH4 control strategy proposal.
Xingyi Huang, Yuwei Yin, Luwei Feng, Xiaoye Tong, Xiaoxin Zhang, Jiangrong Li, and Feng Tian
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 3307–3332, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3307-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3307-2024, 2024
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The Tibetan Plateau, with its diverse vegetation ranging from forests to alpine grasslands, plays a key role in understanding climate change impacts. Existing maps lack detail or miss unique ecosystems. Our research, using advanced satellite technology and machine learning, produced the map TP_LC10-2022. Comparisons with other maps revealed TP_LC10-2022's excellence in capturing local variations. Our map is significant for in-depth ecological studies.
Qinghang Mei, Zhao Zhang, Jichong Han, Jie Song, Jinwei Dong, Huaqing Wu, Jialu Xu, and Fulu Tao
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 3213–3231, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3213-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3213-2024, 2024
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In order to make up for the lack of long-term soybean planting area maps in China, we firstly generated a dataset of soybean planting area with a spatial resolution of 10 m for major producing areas in China from 2017 to 2021 (ChinaSoyArea10m). Compared with existing datasets, ChinaSoyArea10m has higher consistency with census data and further improvement in spatial details. The dataset can provide reliable support for subsequent studies on yield monitoring and food security.
Yavar Pourmohamad, John T. Abatzoglou, Erin J. Belval, Erica Fleishman, Karen Short, Matthew C. Reeves, Nicholas Nauslar, Philip E. Higuera, Eric Henderson, Sawyer Ball, Amir AghaKouchak, Jeffrey P. Prestemon, Julia Olszewski, and Mojtaba Sadegh
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 3045–3060, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3045-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-3045-2024, 2024
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The FPA FOD-Attributes dataset provides > 300 biological, physical, social, and administrative attributes associated with > 2.3×106 wildfire incidents across the US from 1992 to 2020. The dataset can be used to (1) answer numerous questions about the covariates associated with human- and lightning-caused wildfires and (2) support descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive wildfire analytics, including the development of machine learning models.
Ewa Grabska-Szwagrzyk, Dirk Tiede, Martin Sudmanns, and Jacek Kozak
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2877–2891, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2877-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2877-2024, 2024
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We accurately mapped 16 dominant tree species and genera in Poland using Sentinel-2 observations from short periods in spring, summer, and autumn (2018–2021). The classification achieved more than 80% accuracy in country-wide forest species mapping, with variation based on species, region, and observation frequency. Freely accessible resources, including the forest tree species map and training and test data, can be found at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10180469.
Charles E. Miller, Peter C. Griffith, Elizabeth Hoy, Naiara S. Pinto, Yunling Lou, Scott Hensley, Bruce D. Chapman, Jennifer Baltzer, Kazem Bakian-Dogaheh, W. Robert Bolton, Laura Bourgeau-Chavez, Richard H. Chen, Byung-Hun Choe, Leah K. Clayton, Thomas A. Douglas, Nancy French, Jean E. Holloway, Gang Hong, Lingcao Huang, Go Iwahana, Liza Jenkins, John S. Kimball, Tatiana Loboda, Michelle Mack, Philip Marsh, Roger J. Michaelides, Mahta Moghaddam, Andrew Parsekian, Kevin Schaefer, Paul R. Siqueira, Debjani Singh, Alireza Tabatabaeenejad, Merritt Turetsky, Ridha Touzi, Elizabeth Wig, Cathy J. Wilson, Paul Wilson, Stan D. Wullschleger, Yonghong Yi, Howard A. Zebker, Yu Zhang, Yuhuan Zhao, and Scott J. Goetz
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2605–2624, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2605-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2605-2024, 2024
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NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) conducted airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) surveys of over 120 000 km2 in Alaska and northwestern Canada during 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022. This paper summarizes those results and provides links to details on ~ 80 individual flight lines. This paper is presented as a guide to enable interested readers to fully explore the ABoVE L- and P-band SAR data.
Ying Tu, Shengbiao Wu, Bin Chen, Qihao Weng, Yuqi Bai, Jun Yang, Le Yu, and Bing Xu
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2297–2316, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2297-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2297-2024, 2024
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We developed the first 30 m annual cropland dataset of China (CACD) for 1986–2021. The overall accuracy of CACD reached up to 0.93±0.01 and was superior to other products. Our fine-resolution cropland maps offer valuable information for diverse applications and decision-making processes in the future.
Lingcheng Li, Gautam Bisht, Dalei Hao, and L. Ruby Leung
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2007–2032, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2007-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2007-2024, 2024
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This study fills a gap to meet the emerging needs of kilometer-scale Earth system modeling by developing global 1 km land surface parameters for land use, vegetation, soil, and topography. Our demonstration simulations highlight the substantial impacts of these parameters on spatial variability and information loss in water and energy simulations. Using advanced explainable machine learning methods, we identified influential factors driving spatial variability and information loss.
Hui Li, Xiaobo Wang, Shaoqiang Wang, Jinyuan Liu, Yuanyuan Liu, Zhenhai Liu, Shiliang Chen, Qinyi Wang, Tongtong Zhu, Lunche Wang, and Lizhe Wang
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 1689–1701, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1689-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1689-2024, 2024
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Utilizing satellite remote sensing data, we established a multi-season rice calendar dataset named ChinaRiceCalendar. It exhibits strong alignment with field observations collected by agricultural meteorological stations across China. ChinaRiceCalendar stands as a reliable dataset for investigating and optimizing the spatiotemporal dynamics of rice phenology in China, particularly in the context of climate and land use changes.
Giulia Ronchetti, Luigi Nisini Scacchiafichi, Lorenzo Seguini, Iacopo Cerrani, and Marijn van der Velde
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 1623–1649, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1623-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1623-2024, 2024
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We present a dataset of EU-wide harmonized subnational crop area, production, and yield statistics with information on data sources, processing steps, missing and derived data, and quality checks. Statistical records (344 282) collected from 1975 to 2020 for soft and durum wheat, winter and spring barley, grain maize, sunflower, and sugar beet were aligned with the EUROSTAT crop legend and the 2016 territorial classification for 961 regions. Time series have a median length of 21 years.
Xiao Zhang, Tingting Zhao, Hong Xu, Wendi Liu, Jinqing Wang, Xidong Chen, and Liangyun Liu
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 1353–1381, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1353-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1353-2024, 2024
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This work describes GLC_FCS30D, the first global 30 m land-cover dynamics monitoring dataset, which contains 35 land-cover subcategories and covers the period of 1985–2022 in 26 time steps (its maps are updated every 5 years before 2000 and annually after 2000).
Qiangqiang Sun, Ping Zhang, Xin Jiao, Xin Lin, Wenkai Duan, Su Ma, Qidi Pan, Lu Chen, Yongxiang Zhang, Shucheng You, Shunxi Liu, Jinmin Hao, Hong Li, and Danfeng Sun
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 1333–1351, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1333-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1333-2024, 2024
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To provide multifaceted changes under climate change and anthropogenic impacts, we estimated monthly vegetation and soil fractions in 2001–2022, providing an accurate estimate of surface heterogeneous composition, better than vegetation index and vegetation continuous-field products. We find a greening trend on Earth except for the tropics. A combination of interactive changes in vegetation and soil can be adopted as a valuable measurement of climate change and anthropogenic impacts.
Kai Cheng, Yuling Chen, Tianyu Xiang, Haitao Yang, Weiyan Liu, Yu Ren, Hongcan Guan, Tianyu Hu, Qin Ma, and Qinghua Guo
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 803–819, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-803-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-803-2024, 2024
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To quantify forest carbon stock and its future potential accurately, we generated a 30 m resolution forest age map for China in 2020 using multisource remote sensing datasets based on machine learning and time series analysis approaches. Validation with independent field samples indicated that the mapped forest age had an R2 of 0.51--0.63. Nationally, the average forest age is 56.1 years (standard deviation of 32.7 years).
Wolfgang Alexander Obermeier, Clemens Schwingshackl, Ana Bastos, Giulia Conchedda, Thomas Gasser, Giacomo Grassi, Richard A. Houghton, Francesco Nicola Tubiello, Stephen Sitch, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 605–645, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-605-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-605-2024, 2024
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We provide and compare country-level estimates of land-use CO2 fluxes from a variety and large number of models, bottom-up estimates, and country reports for the period 1950–2021. Although net fluxes are small in many countries, they are often composed of large compensating emissions and removals. In many countries, the estimates agree well once their individual characteristics are accounted for, but in other countries, including some of the largest emitters, substantial uncertainties exist.
Cameron I. Ludemann, Nathan Wanner, Pauline Chivenge, Achim Dobermann, Rasmus Einarsson, Patricio Grassini, Armelle Gruere, Kevin Jackson, Luis Lassaletta, Federico Maggi, Griffiths Obli-Laryea, Martin K. van Ittersum, Srishti Vishwakarma, Xin Zhang, and Francesco N. Tubiello
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 525–541, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-525-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-525-2024, 2024
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Nutrient budgets help identify the excess or insufficient use of fertilizers and other nutrient sources in agriculture. They allow the calculation of indicators, such as the nutrient balance (surplus or deficit) and nutrient use efficiency, that help to monitor agricultural productivity and sustainability. This article describes a global cropland nutrient budget that provides data on 205 countries and territories from 1961 to 2020 (data available at https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/ESB).
Yuanwei Qin, Xiangming Xiao, Hao Tang, Ralph Dubayah, Russell Doughty, Diyou Liu, Fang Liu, Yosio Shimabukuro, Egidio Arai, Xinxin Wang, and Berrien Moore III
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 321–336, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-321-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-321-2024, 2024
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Forest definition has two major biophysical parameters, i.e., canopy height and canopy coverage. However, few studies have assessed forest cover maps in terms of these two parameters at a large scale. Here, we assessed the annual forest cover maps in the Brazilian Amazon using 1.1 million footprints of canopy height and canopy coverage. Over 93 % of our forest cover maps are consistent with the FAO forest definition, showing the high accuracy of these forest cover maps in the Brazilian Amazon.
Xiangan Liang, Qiang Liu, Jie Wang, Shuang Chen, and Peng Gong
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 177–200, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-177-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-177-2024, 2024
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The state-of-the-art MODIS surface reflectance products suffer from temporal and spatial gaps, which make it difficult to characterize the continuous variation of the terrestrial surface. We proposed a framework for generating the first global 500 m daily seamless data cubes (SDC500), covering the period from 2000 to 2022. We believe that the SDC500 dataset can interest other researchers who study land cover mapping, quantitative remote sensing, and ecological science.
Rémy Ballot, Nicolas Guilpart, and Marie-Hélène Jeuffroy
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5651–5666, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5651-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5651-2023, 2023
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Assessing the benefits of crop diversification – a key element of agroecological transition – on a large scale requires a description of current crop sequences as a baseline, which is lacking at the scale of Europe. To fill this gap, we used a dataset that provides temporally and spatially incomplete land cover information to create a map of dominant crop sequence types for Europe over 2012–2018. This map is a useful baseline for assessing the benefits of future crop diversification.
Kristof Van Tricht, Jeroen Degerickx, Sven Gilliams, Daniele Zanaga, Marjorie Battude, Alex Grosu, Joost Brombacher, Myroslava Lesiv, Juan Carlos Laso Bayas, Santosh Karanam, Steffen Fritz, Inbal Becker-Reshef, Belén Franch, Bertran Mollà-Bononad, Hendrik Boogaard, Arun Kumar Pratihast, Benjamin Koetz, and Zoltan Szantoi
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5491–5515, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5491-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5491-2023, 2023
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WorldCereal is a global mapping system that addresses food security challenges. It provides seasonal updates on crop areas and irrigation practices, enabling informed decision-making for sustainable agriculture. Our global products offer insights into temporary crop extent, seasonal crop type maps, and seasonal irrigation patterns. WorldCereal is an open-source tool that utilizes space-based technologies, revolutionizing global agricultural mapping.
Francesco N. Tubiello, Giulia Conchedda, Leon Casse, Pengyu Hao, Giorgia De Santis, and Zhongxin Chen
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 4997–5015, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-4997-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-4997-2023, 2023
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We describe a new dataset of cropland area circa the year 2020, with global coverage and country detail. Data are generated from geospatial information on the agreement characteristics of six high-resolution cropland maps. By helping to highlight features of cropland characteristics and underlying causes for agreement across land cover products, the dataset can be used as a tool to help guide future mapping efforts towards improved agricultural monitoring.
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Short summary
Aboveground biomass (AGB) is a critical component of the Earth's carbon cycle. The presented dataset aims to help monitor this essential climate variable with AGB time series from 2011 onward, derived with a carefully calibrated spatial relationship between the measurements of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission and pre-existing AGB maps. The produced dataset has been extensively compared with other available AGB time series and can be used in AGB studies.
Aboveground biomass (AGB) is a critical component of the Earth's carbon cycle. The presented...
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