Global Pasture Watch - Annual grassland class and extent maps at 30-m spatial resolution (2000—2024)

<h2><strong>Sub-dataset: Dominant grassland class, 2012-2014</strong></h2> <h2>Description</h2> <p>Global annual grassland class and extent for 2000&mdash;2024 produced by&nbsp;<a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-04139-6">Parente et al. (2024)</a>&nbsp;within the scope of the&nbsp;<a href="https://landcarbonlab.org/data/global-grassland-and-livestock-monitoring/">Global Pasture Watch initiative</a>. The mapped grassland extent includes any land cover type, which contains at least&nbsp;<strong>30% of dry or wet low vegetation</strong>, dominated by grasses and forbs (less than 3 meters) and a:</p> <ul> <li>maximum of 50% tree canopy cover (greater than 5 meters),</li> <li>maximum of 70% of other woody vegetation (scrubs and open shrubland), and</li> <li>maximum of 50% active cropland cover in mosaic landscapes of cropland &amp; other vegetation.</li> </ul> <p>The grassland extent is classified into two classes:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Cultivated grassland</strong>: Areas where grasses and other forage plants have been intentionally planted and managed, as well as areas of native grassland-type vegetation where they clearly exhibit active and 'heavy' management for specific human-directed uses, such as directed grazing of livestock.</li> <li><strong>Natural/semi-natural grassland</strong>: Relatively undisturbed native grasslands/short-height vegetation, such as steppes and tundra, as well as areas that have experienced varying degrees of human activity in the past, which may contain a mix of native and introduced species due to historical land use and natural processes. In general, they exhibit natural-looking patterns of varied vegetation and clearly ordered hydrological relationships throughout the landscape.</li> <li><strong>Open shrubland (v2-beta): </strong>Land on which the vegetation is dominated by low-growing woody plants, characterized by a sparse distribution of shrubs and dominated by woody perennials. Typically covers 50&mdash;75% of the area, with significant open ground (with or without herbaceous understory) between them, where shrub canopies are less than 10 meters in diameter, and tree cover is below 10%, meaning they do not form a continuous or semi-continuous canopy.</li> </ul> <p>The dataset is organized in 69 global mosaics (25 years for each time series) in COG (Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF) format, WGS84 Coordinate Systems (EPSG:4326) and pixel size equal to 0.00025 degrees, including:</p> <ul> <li><strong>Probabilities</strong>&nbsp;of cultivated grassland (values range from 0&ndash;100),</li> <li><strong>Probabilities</strong>&nbsp;of natural/semi-natural grassland (values range from 0&ndash;100), and</li> <li><strong>Probabilities</strong> of open shrubland (values range from 0&ndash;100), and</li> <li><strong>Dominant</strong> class (0-other land cover, 1-cultivated grassland and 2-natural/semi-natural grassland, 3-open shrubland).</li> </ul> <p>All raster files are in unsigned&nbsp;<code>8-bit integer format</code>&nbsp;and use&nbsp;<code>255</code>&nbsp;as no-data value (pixels ignored by prediction), following an specific naming convention:</p> <ol> <li>Project name: Global Pasture Watch (<code>gpw</code>)</li> <li>Class name: cultivated grassland (<code>cultiv.grassland</code>), natural/semi-natural grassland (<code>nat.semi.grassland</code>), open shrubland (<code>open.shrubland</code>) &nbsp;and dominant grassland (<code>grassland</code>)</li> <li>Procedure combination: Random Forest (<code>rf</code>), median filter (med.filt) and balanced threshold (<code>bthr</code>).</li> <li>Variable type: probability (<code>p</code>) and factor class (<code>c</code>)</li> <li>Spatial resolution: 30m</li> <li>Begin of time reference: date of first Landsat composite used by the modeling (<code>20240101</code>)</li> <li>End of time reference: date of last Landsat composite used by the modeling (<code>20241231</code>)</li> <li>Spatial extent: global (<code>go</code>)</li> <li>Coordinate system: World Geodetic System 1984, used in GPS (<code>epsg.4326</code>)</li> <li>Version: v2</li> </ol> <h3>Related resources</h3> <ul> <li><strong>Maps of dominant grassland:</strong><br><a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15646181">2000-2002</a><a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15644486"> 2003-2005</a><a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15644623"> 2006-2008</a><a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15647042"> 2009-2011</a><a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15647681"> 2012-2014</a><a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15648306"> 2015-2017</a><a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15648551"> 2018-2020</a><a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15648751"> 2021-2023</a> <a href="http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15649332">2024</a></li> <li><strong>Probability maps of cultivated grassland:</strong><br><a href="https://zenodo.org/records/13890401/files/ggc-30m.csv?download=1">2000-2024 (All URLs)</a></li> <li><strong>Probability maps of natural/semi-natural grassland:</strong><br><a href="https://zenodo.org/records/13890401/files/ggc-30m.csv?download=1">2000-2024 (All URLs)</a></li> <li> <div><strong>Grassland reference samples based on VHR imagery (2000&ndash;2024):</strong><br><a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15631655">GeoPackage files</a></div> </li> <li><strong>Global machine learning models (Random Forest):</strong><br><a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13952806">Parquet and joblib python files</a></li> <li><strong>Reference sampling design derived by FSCV:</strong><br><a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11391517">GeoPackage and raster files</a></li> <li><strong>Harmonized reference samples based on existing LULC dataset:</strong><br><a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13951976">GeoPackage and raster files</a></li> <li><strong>Source code for reproducibility:<br></strong><a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13952867">GitHub release</a><strong><br></strong></li> <li><strong>Mapping feedback tool:</strong><br><a href="https://geo-wiki.org">GeoWiki</a></li> <li><strong>Data catalogues:</strong><br><a href="https://stac.openlandmap.org/gpw_ggc-30m/collection.json?.language=en">OpenLandMap STAC</a> <a href="https://global-pasture-watch.projects.earthengine.app/view/ggc-30m">Google Earth Engine</a></li> </ul> <p><strong>Support</strong></p> <p>For questions of bugs/inconsistencies related to the dataset raise a GitHub issue in&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/wri/global-pasture-watch">https://github.com/wri/global-pasture-watch</a></p>