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Land carbon sink in the conterminous US from 1985 to 2020

September 16, 2025

This carbon dataset is generated from the parallel Integrated Biosphere Simulator (pIBIS). Annual carbon variables cover 1985-2020 at 1-km (990m) spatial resolution. All the variables are in NetCDF format. Each variable has 36 layers, 2960 rows, 4677 columns, and in WGS_1984_Albers projection. A single layer mask file TIF is provided. Carbon stock and flux units are in kgC/m2 and kgC/m2/yr, respectively. Tabular annual carbon summary are in TgC. Overall data creation steps: (1) The pIBIS model was used to run 1-km simulations with climate, land cover change, and fire input data (1985-2020); (2) Monte Carlo simulations at 10-km resolution were implemented to quantify model uncertainty range; (3) Post-simulation processes includes summaries at county scale and aggregation to CONUS scale; (4) Key input datasets for the pIBIS model was described in the accompanying journal articles and model code link; (5) Step-by-Step model setup and case study package are provided on GitHub. (6) Software to open the NetCDF data: NCView, Matlab, Panoply, QGIS, GDAL, Python, etc. Carbon data list: NBP – net biome productivity, NEP – net ecosystem productivity, NPP – net primary productivity, SOC2CO2 – soil CO2 emission Biomass – total live biomass carbon, Deadwood – total standing and down deadwood carbon, Litter – total litter carbon, SOC – total organic soil carbon, TotalC – total ecosystem carbon. NoData Value: -9999, Mask: Land pixels simulated in the conterminous U.S. Other files: Mask map in TIF and Annual carbon summary tables in CSV format.

Publication Year 2025
Title Land carbon sink in the conterminous US from 1985 to 2020
DOI 10.5066/P1WDJOMS
Authors Jinxun Liu
Product Type Data Release
Record Source USGS Asset Identifier Service (AIS)
USGS Organization Western Geographic Science Center - Main Office
Rights This work is marked with CC0 1.0 Universal
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