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 LANDMATE PFT dataset provides a land cover map for North America for the year 2015 in 0.1° (~10 km). The dataset is based on land cover data of the ESA Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI, native resolution: 300 m) which is translated into 16 plant functional types (PFTs) and non-vegetated classes employing the cross-walking procedure introduced by Reinhart et al. (2022), which was modified for North America. The translation is done under consideration of the Holdridge Life Zones (HLZs), a system that classifies land areas based on bioclimatic properties. Through the HLZs, regional distinction of the individual PFT distribution can be achieved. The land cover information is given as fractions per grid cell where each fraction represents the area covered by the respective land cover within each grid cell (0-1). The LANDMATE PFT dataset (0.1° resolution) serves as base map for the historical and future land use and land cover dataset LUCAS LUC developed by Hoffmann et al. (2023). Plant functional types and non-vegetative 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 Version 1.0 of this dataset does not exist. Here we use Version 1.1 in the name for consistency reasons.
