Managed Land Mask for Russia (2020) Aligned with UNFCCC Inventory Reporting

Description The spatial delineation of managed and unmanaged land is essential for ensuring consistency between spatial datasets (e.g. remote sensing products and atmospheric greenhouse gas inversions) and national GHG inventory reporting under the UNFCCC. According to the recent National Inventory Document (NID, 2025), managed land in Russian Federation accounts for 940 million ha, or 56% of the total land area. This dataset provides a spatially explicit delineation of managed and unmanaged land across Russia for the year 2020. It is specifically designed to support comparison between spatial datasets and national inventory reporting. The classification is based on a combination of global land cover products and auxiliary datasets. The ESA WorldCover 2021 dataset (Zanaga et al., 2022) was used as the base land cover map. Methodology Unmanaged land was identified based on the following criteria: Forests without management plans (155.5 million ha, NID, 2025)Delineated based on regional forest management plan data (HCVF, 2025). Natural grasslands (18.2 million ha)Derived from ESA WorldCover grassland class (class 20), excluding managed grasslands using Global Pasture Watch (Parente et al., 2025). Undisturbed wetlands (including inner waters: 226.5 million ha)Identified from ESA WorldCover wetland-related classes (class 90), as well as grasslands and shrublands (classes 20 and 30) consistent with national wetland map (Schepaschenko, Shvidenko, 2026). Managed and modified areas were excluded using WPC (2026). Natural water bodiesDerived from ESA WorldCover (class 80), excluding reservoirs identified using the Global Dam Watch database (GDW, 2024). Other unmanaged land (359.5 million ha), Including: Bare land, snow, and ice (ESA WorldCover classes 60, 70) Tundra ecosystems (ESA WorldCover classes 20, 30, 100), excluding managed grasslands (Parente et al., 2025) Abandoned afforested land, defined as forest cover (class 10) on previously abandoned cropland (Lesiv et al., 2018) All remaining areas were classified as managed land. Additional adjustments were applied: Mining areas (Maus et al., 2020) were classified as managed land Bare land adjacent to built-up areas was also assigned to managed land Output Data The final product is a binary raster mask of managed and unmanaged land in the Russian Federation for the year 2020. The dataset is provided at a spatial resolution of approximately 100 m (0.000833 degrees) in the WGS 84 geographic coordinate system. Pixel values are defined as follows:1 – Managed land0 – Unmanaged land References GDW (2024). Global Dam Watch Database. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25988293 HCVF (2025). High Conservation Value Forests. https://hcvf.ru/ru/documents_old Parente, L. et al. (2025). Global Pasture Watch – Annual grassland class and extent maps (2000–2024) (v2-beta). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15648551 Lesiv, M. et al. (2018). Spatial distribution of arable and abandoned land across former Soviet Union countries. Scientific Data, 5, e180056. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.56 Maus, V., Giljum, S., Gutschlhofer, J. et al. A global-scale data set of mining areas. Sci Data 7, 289 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00624-w NID (2025). National Inventory Document. Russian Federation. https://unfccc.int/documents/646536 WPC (2026). Drained peatland dataset. NGO Wildfire Prevention Center https://peatfires.nextgis.com/resource/5/display Schepaschenko, D., & Shvidenko, A. (2026). Land cover for Russia 2010 [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18630207. Zanaga, D. et al. (2022). ESA WorldCover 10 m 2021 v200. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7254221