LANDMATE PFT land cover dataset for Europe 2015 (Version 1.0)

Project: Modelling human LAND surface modifications and its feedbacks on local and regional cliMATE - The project “Modelling human LAND surface modifications and its feedbacks on local and regional climate” (LANDMATE, https://www.hicss-hamburg.de/projects/landmate/index.php.en) is carried out within the framework of the Helmholtz Institute for Climate Service Science (HICSS), a cooperation between Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon and Universität Hamburg. Within LANDMATE, scientists from GERICS and the Institute of Geography (CEN, Universität Hamburg) investigate the direct biophysical effects of land use and land cover change on the local and regional climate. The overall objectives of this project are to: I) Better represent dynamic land use characteristics in a regional climate model, II) Include land management practices into a regional climate model, III) Quantify biophysical impacts of land use dynamics on regional climate variability and change in Europe in the frame of WCRP CORDEX Flagship Pilot Study “Land Use and Climate Across Scales” (LUCAS, https://ms.hereon.de/cordex_fps_lucas/). Summary: The LANDMATE PFT dataset provides a land cover map for Europe for the year 2015 in 0.1° (~10km) and 0.018° (~2km) resolution. The dataset is based on land cover data of the ESA Climate Change Initiative (ESA-CCI, native resolution: 300m) which is translated into 16 plant functional types (PFTs) and non-vegetated classes employing the cross-walking procedure introduced by Reinhart et al. (2021). The translation is done under consideration of the Holdridge Life Zones (HLZs), a system, that classifies land areas based on bioclimatic properties. Through the HLZs, regional distinction of the individual PFT distribution can be achieved. The land cover information is given as fractions per grid cell where each fraction represents the area covered by the respective land cover within each grid cell (0-1). The dataset is available in two different horizontal resolutions, 0.1° (~10km) and 0.018° (~2km), whereby the land cover information is resampled using a fractional approach to achieve the desired resolution. The LANDMATE PFT dataset was carefully developed and designed to meet the present and future requirements of regional climate models and is therefore recommended to be used for regional climate modeling over the European Continent. The LANDMATE PFT dataset (0.1° resolution) serves as basemap for the historical and future land use and land cover dataset LUCAS LUC developed by Hoffmann et al. (2021).