Forest carbon stocks of the contiguous United States (2000-2009)

Through application of a nearest-neighbor imputation approach, mapped estimates of forest carbon density were developed for the contiguous United States using the annual forest inventory conducted by the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, MODIS satellite imagery, and ancillary geospatial datasets. This data publication contains the following 8 raster maps: total forest carbon in all stocks, live tree aboveground forest carbon, live tree belowground forest carbon, forest down dead carbon, forest litter carbon, forest standing dead carbon, forest soil organic carbon, and forest understory carbon.The U.S. has been providing national-scale estimates of forest carbon stocks and stock change to meet United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reporting requirements for years. Although these currently are provided as national estimates by pool and year to meet greenhouse gas monitoring requirements, there is growing need to disaggregate these estimates to finer scales to enable strategic forest management and monitoring activities focused on various ecosystem services such as carbon (C) storage enhancement.Original metadata date was 02/28/2013. Minor metadata updates on 03/25/2014. Minor metadata updates on 12/12/2016, 08/09/2017, and 06/26/2019. *These data are now also available as a map service: https://apps.fs.usda.gov/fsgisx01/rest/services/RDW_ForestEcology.