The photosynthetic composition (C3 or C4) of vegetation on the land surface is essential for accurate simulations of biosphere-atmosphere exchanges of carbon, water, and energy. C3 and C4 plants have different responses to light, temperature, CO2, and nitrogen; they also differ in physiological functions like stomatal conductance and isotope fractionation. A fine-scale distribution of these plant types is essential for earth science modeling.The C4 percentage is determined from data sets that describe the continuous distribution of plant growth forms (i.e., the percent of a grid cell covered by herbaceous or woody vegetation), climate classifications, the fraction of a grid cell covered in croplands, and national crop type harvest area statistics. The staff from the International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP) Initiative II have made the original data set consistent with the ISLSCP-2 land/water mask. This data set contains a single file in ArcInfo ASCIIGRID format.This data set is one of the products of the International Satellite Land-Surface Climatology Project, Initiative II (ISLSCP II) data collection which contains 50 global time series data sets for the ten-year period 1986 to 1995. Selected data sets span even longer periods. ISLSCP II is a consistent collection of data sets that were compiled from existing data sources and algorithms, and were designed to satisfy the needs of modelers and investigators of the global carbon, water and energy cycle. The data were acquired from a number of U.S. and international agencies, universities, and institutions. The global data sets were mapped at consistent spatial (1, 0.5 and 0.25 degrees) and temporal (monthly, with meteorological data at finer (e.g., 3-hour)) resolutions and reformatted into a common ASCII format. The data and documentation have undergone two peer reviews.ISLSCP is one of several projects of Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) [http://www.gewex.org/] and has the lead role in addressing land-atmosphere interactions -- process modeling, data retrieval algorithms, field experiment design and execution, and the development of global data sets.

This data set contains images of fractional cover estimates of photosynthetic vegetation (PV) canopy, nonphotosynthetic vegetation (NPV), and exposed soils (S) derived from Landsat images (30-m resolution) obtained for two ranches in the Brazilian Amazon from 1996 to 2002. The Fazenda Vitoria ranch is located in eastern Para near the city of Paragominas and is a mosaic of primary forest, logged forest, secondary forest, and pasture with moderately dissected topography. The Fazenda Nova Vida ranch is located in the state of Rondonia in western Amazonia and is a mosaic of primary forest, logged forest, and pastures. For Fazenda Vitoria, two dry-season Landsat images were obtained, subset, and analyzed. For Nova Vida three dry-season images and one end-of-wet-season image were obtained, subset, and analyzed. Spectral mixture analysis, which decomposes individual satellite pixels into constituent cover fractions of surface materials, was used with a general probabilistic modeling approach to derive subpixel cover fractions of PV, NPV, and S. There are six GeoTIFF (.tif) files with this data set.

This data set provides Landsat images of the county of Sao Francisco do Para located in the Bragantina region of Para, Brazil, the oldest agriculture frontier in Amazonia. These images are subsets for the municipio (county) and immediate region. There are seven GeoTIFF files (.tif) with this data set which includes two for July 24, 1984 multispectral scanner (MSS), one for June 21, 1994 thematic mapper Landsat 5 (TM5), three for July 13, 1999 thematic mapper Landsat 7 (TM7), and one TM for June 21, 1994.

This data set provides a time series of calcium, magnesium, and potassium extracted from soil samples from a laboratory column extraction study conducted in 2002. Soils used in the columns were originally collected in 1998 in Fazenda Vitoria, a cattle ranch 6 km north of the town of Paragominas, Para, Brazil. The soils were from contrasting land uses of primary forest (mata), secondary forest (capoeira), or pasture (pasto). Water equilibrated with increasing concentrations of CO2 was used to extract cations from the soil columns. Data represent the time series of cation concentrations in the extract solutions as well as the total content of cations removed from the soils. There is one comma-delimited ASCII file with this data set.

This data set provides a 27-year land cover time series of 28.5-m resolution products derived from Landsat images for 80% of Rondonia, Brazil, for the period 1984 to 2010. Selected Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) images from the years 1984 through 2010, for seven path/row scenes (PortoVelho, Ariquemes, Jiparana, Luiza (or Urupa), Cacoal, Chapuingaia, and Vilhena) were mosaicked for each year. Each mosaicked image was georectified and classified into seven land-cover classes--savanna/rock, pasture, secondary forest, primary forest, cloud, urban, or water. This 27-year time series allows the long-term assessment of land-cover variation across the state. There are 27 GeoTIFF image files (.tif) and one accompanying .xml file for each GeoTIFF file, compressed and available as *.zip files, one file for each year for the period 1984-2010, with this data set.

This data set provides classified land cover transition images (maps) derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Multispectral Scanner (MSS) imagery for Ariquemes, Luiza, and Ji-Paranao areas in Rondonia, Brazil, at 30-m resolution. Images depict the age relative to the year 2000, of cleared land from the date the land was cut, to the date when primary forests transitioned into nonforest class (for example, 25 = cut by 1975, or 25 years before the year 2000). Temporal changes in three regions are represented by 31 TM scenes acquired between 1984 and 1999, and a pair of MSS scenes from 1975 and 1978. Data are provided as three GeoTiff (*.tif) images, one for each of the three areas.

This data set provides a time series of land cover classifications for Ariquemes, Ji-Parana, and Luiza, research sites in Rondonia, Brazil. The land cover classifications are derived from the Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensors. The time period ranges from June 1975 through June 2000, but all areas do not have images for all the years. The images were classified into the following categories: 1. Primary upland forest, representing the dominant natural vegetation in the area; 2. Pasture and green pasture; 3. Second growth, dominated by small trees and shrubs with low species diversity and biomass relative to primary forest; 4. Soil/urban; 5. Rock/savanna; 6. Water; and 7. Cloud and smoke obscured. In addition, areas covered by rock and savanna were mapped and all areas outside of the overlap zone between all dates within a scene, and scene edges, were masked.There are 75 GeoTIFF files (.tif) with this data set which includes: classified images (*ful.tif) and a corresponding image mask (*ful_mask .tif) for each date (with the exception of 1978 and 1996 images for Ji-Parana, for which there are only ful_mask.tif files), and three mask files for rock, savannah, and scene edges, for each area. By area, there are 31 images for Ariquemes, 23 images for Ji-Parana, and 21 images for Luiza.

This data set provides fractional land cover type images for shade, green vegetation (GV), non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV), and soil for the regions of JiParana, PortoVelho, Luiza, Ariquemes, and Cacoal in the state of Rondonia, Brazil, for the period 1984 to 2000. The images were derived with a spectral mixture analysis (SMA) of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) time series scenes for each of these areas. There were 249 TM scenes and one Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS) scene acquired for these analyses. The images are 30-m Landsat resolution and were georectified to the Brazilian space agency 1998 and 1999 PRODES imagery. There are 250 GeoTIIF image files (*.tif) in this data set. Files are grouped by region and year/month/day scene was taken.

This data set is a five-class land cover for Southern Para for the years 1984 (Landsat MSS), 1988 (Landsat TM), 1996, and 2003 (Landsat ETM+). The final classification shows five classes derived using visual comparison (Water, Clouds/Shadow, Forest, Not Forest, Background). These data were used in 2007 to illustrate the nature of deforestation in Southern Para, Brazil over the past twenty years (Simmons et al. 2007). There are four annual GeoTIFF files distributed with this data set. Each GeoTIFF file and accompanying *.tfw file have been compressed into a single *.zip file.

This data set contains proportional estimates for the vegetative cover types of tree cover, herbaceous vegetation, and bare ground over South America for the period 2000-2001. These products were derived from all seven bands of the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard NASA's Terra satellite. A set of 500-m MOD09A1 Surface Reflectance 8-day minimum blue reflectance composites were used as input data. To reduce the presence of cloud shadows, The data were converted to 40-day composites using a second darkest albedo (sum of blue, green, and red bands), and the Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) algorithmn was utilized (Hansen et al., 2002). The VCF shows how much of a land cover such as forest or grassland exists anywhere on the land surface. The VCF product may depict areas of heterogeneous land cover better than traditional discrete classification schemes which shows where land cover types are concentrated. There are three images provided in GeoTIFF format.