Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment
Improving our understanding of the global environment, and how it is affected by human activities

Global Potential Vegetation Dataset

This dataset is described in:

  • Ramankutty, N., and J.A. Foley (1999). Estimating historical changes in global land cover: croplands from 1700 to 1992, Global Biogeochemical Cycles 13(4), 997-1027.

The data is available in two formats, NetCDF and ArcINFO ASCII, at 5min and 0.5 degree resolution.

The NetCDF download (728K) contains the following files:

  1. README
  2. vegtype_5min.nc.gz – gzipped NetCDF 5 min data
  3. vegtype_0.5.nc.gz – gzipped NetCDF data aggregated to a 0.5 deg resolution
  4. readnc.f – a FORTRAN program to read the NetCDF files
  5. ies-io.f – a FORTRAN program that contains NetCDF subroutines
  6. makefile – a makefile to compile the programs used to read the NetCDF files

PLEASE NOTE: this global dataset is meant to be used only for continental to global scale applications. Use caution when using this dataset at local scales.

Downloads