Annual global terrestrial ecosystem maps from 1982 to 2024 aligned with the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: . Spatially explicit and temporally consistent ecosystem data are needed for biodiversity assessment, ecosystem accounting, conservation planning, and Earth system analysis. Existing global products commonly provide either annual land cover without a functional ecosystem classification or ecosystem maps for a single reference period. In this research, we present annual global terrestrial ecosystem maps for 1982–2024 aligned with the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology. The workflow combines annual land cover developed by Global Land Cover Change Monitoring Platform (FROM-GLC Plus) with 18 climate regions and four landform classes to define 507 World Terrestrial Ecosystem (WTE) types. These types are aggregated as fractions within 1 km grid cells and assigned to 41 terrestrial ecosystem functional groups (EFGs), together with three cross-realm categories, through an explicit rule-based crosswalk supported by indicative distribution maps and ancillary data. Validation used a pool of 100,500 globally distributed reference locations interpreted at the EFG level. Across the valid annual subsets for 1985–2024, overall accuracy ranged from 84.62 ± 0.55 % to 87.18 ± 0.40 %, with a mean of 86.14 ± 0.47 %. This dataset serves as a crucial resource for improving our understanding of long-term global terrestrial ecosystem dynamics, supporting biodiversity assessment and ecosystem accounting, informing conservation planning and policy decisions, and advancing Earth system research. The full archive of global annual EFGs is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19448555 (Du et al., 2026).
Institution: Tsinghua University
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7225638376
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