Dataset Information

Downscaling land-use data to provide global 30″ estimates of five land-use classes.

ABSTRACT: Land-use change is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity globally. The effects of land use on biodiversity manifest primarily at local scales which are not captured by the coarse spatial grain of current global land-use mapping. Assessments of land-use impacts on biodiversity across large spatial extents require data at a similar spatial grain to the ecological processes they are assessing. Here, we develop a method for statistically downscaling mapped land-use data that combines generalized additive modeling and constrained optimization. This method was applied to the 0.5° Land-use Harmonization data for the year 2005 to produce global 30″ (approx. 1 km(2)) estimates of five land-use classes: primary habitat, secondary habitat, cropland, pasture, and urban. The original dataset was partitioned into 61 bio-realms (unique combinations of biome and biogeographical realm) and downscaled using relationships with fine-grained climate, land cover, landform, and anthropogenic influence layers. The downscaled land-use data were validated using the PREDICTS database and the geoWiki global cropland dataset. Application of the new method to all 61 bio-realms produced global fine-grained layers from the 2005 time step of the Land-use Harmonization dataset. Coarse-scaled proportions of land use estimated from these data compared well with those estimated in the original datasets (mean R (2): 0.68 ± 0.19). Validation with the PREDICTS database showed the new downscaled land-use layers improved discrimination of all five classes at PREDICTS sites (P < 0.0001 in all cases). Additional validation of the downscaled cropping layer with the geoWiki layer showed an R (2) improvement of 0.12 compared with the Land-use Harmonization data. The downscaling method presented here produced the first global land-use dataset at a spatial grain relevant to ecological processes that drive changes in biodiversity over space and time. Integrating these data with biodiversity measures will enable the reporting of land-use impacts on biodiversity at a finer resolution than previously possible. Furthermore, the general method presented here could be useful to others wishing to downscale similarly constrained coarse-resolution data for other environmental variables.

SUBMITTER: Hoskins AJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4814442 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Large scale, high-resolution global data on farm animal distributions are essential for spatially explicit assessments of the epidemiological, environmental and socio-economic impacts of the livestock sector. This has been the major motivation behind the development of the Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW) database, which has been extensively used since its first publication in 2007. The database relies on a downscaling methodology whereby census counts of animals in sub-national administrative units are redistributed at the level of grid cells as a function of a series of spatial covariates. The recent upgrade of GLW1 to GLW2 involved automating the processing, improvement of input data, and downscaling at a spatial resolution of 1 km per cell (5 km per cell in the earlier version). The underlying statistical methodology, however, remained unchanged. In this paper, we evaluate new methods to downscale census data with a higher accuracy and increased processing efficiency. Two main factors were evaluated, based on sample census datasets of cattle in Africa and chickens in Asia. First, we implemented and evaluated Random Forest models (RF) instead of stratified regressions. Second, we investigated whether models that predicted the number of animals per rural person (per capita) could provide better downscaled estimates than the previous approach that predicted absolute densities (animals per km2). RF models consistently provided better predictions than the stratified regressions for both continents and species. The benefit of per capita over absolute density models varied according to the species and continent. In addition, different technical options were evaluated to reduce the processing time while maintaining their predictive power. Future GLW runs (GLW 3.0) will apply the new RF methodology with optimized modelling options. The potential benefit of per capita models will need to be further investigated with a better distinction between rural and agricultural populations.

Dataset Information

Downscaling land-use data to provide global 30″ estimates of five land-use classes.

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