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.