Spatial realizations of county-level land use projections for the conterminous United States, 2020-2070, used in the 2020 RPA Assessment

These data, denoted collectively as the spatial realizations, are comprised of 2001 rasters of 90-meter resolution, with each raster representing the conterminous United States (CONUS) land base. One raster represents the base land use in 2020; the other rasters represent projections according to year (decadal time step 2030 through 2070), scenario-climate future (four socioeceonomic pathways, intersected with five climate projections), and case (twenty cases of a parameter driving the degree of contagious allocation of projected land use changes). Projected rasters were generated by allocating county-level gross land use change projections across the base map. Collectively, the spatial realizations represent a wall-to-wall scenario-based projection of land use and its spatial pattern across the conterminous United States.
The spatial realizations were generated to support the Resources Planning Act (RPA) 2020 Assessment (https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/inventory/rpaa), providing resource area research teams with the means to analyze landscape pattern and land use (e.g., forest) fragmentation projections. The spatial realizations also facilitate analyses by units other than geopolitical (e.g., hydrologic or ecoregion units).
These data were published on 04/17/2023. Metadata updated on 10/17/2023 to include reference to published RPA Assessment and related published data.

Methods for the downscaling algorithm are detailed in Brooks et al. (2020).