National forest carbon harvesting and allocation dataset for the period 2003 to 2018

Combining the tree cover loss dataset, the interannual variation of the satellite-based vegetation index, and the provincial statistical harvested wood provided by the China Forestry and Grassland Statistical Yearbook, we produced a Long-term HarvEst and Allocation of Forest Biomass (LEAF) dataset for China, which provides spatial information on forest harvesting at a resolution of 30 m. Averaged from 2003 to 2018, forest harvesting took away 68.34 Mt C yr^-1. The validation results demonstrated the accuracy and reliability of the dataset in capturing the spatial variation of harvested carbon. The file format of the product is GeoTIFF with the spatial reference of WGS84 (EPSG:4326). Each GeoTIFF file represents annual harvested forest carbon (unit: g C m⁻²yr^-1), the absolute harvested carbon per pixel is obtained by multiplying by the corresponding pixel area. The excel provides the harvested carbon allocated to the different pools annually as well as the carbon dynamics, which have been updated to 2022. The dataset generated by this study is an important data source for estimating the carbon budget of forest ecosystems in China, which also can provide essential insights for sustainable forest management and climate change mitigation efforts.