The world’s forests 2010

The 2015 Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA2015) continues the tradition of seeking to describe the world’s forests – a tradition that began in 1948. The world’s forest 2010 map is a raster product with a pixel size of 250 meters by 250 meters. It was prepared with the following geospatial layers : - Forest cover data from the Vegetation Continuous Fields product (VCF) derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor, on-board the Terra and Aqua satellites (Earth Observation System, NASA) with a 250 m spatial resolution (Hansen et al., 2003). - Water data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM, NASA) Water Body Data at 250 m spatial resolution in combination with the MODIS global water mask (Carroll et al., 2009). - Elevation data from the SRTM at 1 km resolution, down-sampled to the 10 million scale. - Country boundaries and coastlines from the Global Administrative Unit Layer (GAUL, 2008) of the FAO. - Global ecological zones (FAO, 2012)

References: - Hansen, M., R. DeFries, J.R. Townshend, M. Carroll, C. Dimiceli, and R. Sohlberg, 2003. Vegetation Continuous Fields MOD44B, 2001 Percent Tree Cover, Collection 3, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 2001. - Carroll, M., Townshend, J., DiMiceli, C., Noojipady, P., Sohlberg, R. 2009. A New Global Raster Water Mask at 250 Meter Resolution. International Journal of Digital Earth. ( volume 2 number 4) - FAO, 2012 Global ecological zones for FAO forest reporting: 2010 Update. Forest resources Assessment Working Paper 179, Rome, 2012.