Large herbivore biomass in protected areas

Large herbivores provide key ecosystem processes, but have experienced massive historical losses and are under intense pressure, leaving current ecosystems with dramatically simplified faunas relative to the long-term evolutionary norm. Hampered by a shifting baseline, natural levels of large-herbivore biomass are poorly understood and seldom targeted. Here, we present a collation of large-herbivore biomass data from published sources as well as personal communication. The data includes continent, ecosystem name, latitude, longitude, large herbivore biomass in kg/km2 and the source of the data. It can be used together with net primary productivity (e.g., using satellite-derived NPP retrieved from http://files.ntsg.umt.edu/data/NTSG_Products/MOD17/GeoTIFF/MOD17A3/GeoTIFF_30arcsec/) to explore the scaling relationship between producer and consumer.