ISLSCP II Historical Land Cover and Land Use, 1700-1990

The Historical Land Cover and Land Use data set was developed to provide the global change community with historical land use estimates. The data set describes historical land use changes over a 300-year historical period (1700-1990). Testing against historical data is an important step for validating integrated models of global environmental change. Owing to long time lags in the climate and biogeochemical systems, these models should aim to simulate the land use dynamics for long periods, i.e., spanning decades to centuries. Developing such models requires an understanding of past and current trends and is therefore strongly data dependent. For this purpose, a historical database of the global environment has been developed: HYDE. Historical statistical inventories on agricultural land (census data, tax records, land surveys, etc) and different spatial analysis techniques were used to create a geographically-explicit data set of land use change, with a regular time interval. The data set can be used to test integrated models of global change. Continental-scale historical data were used for that period.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated April 13, 2026, 19:33 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 16:45 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 64c47b2e-2e40-4899-ac98-eeec1677e751
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/967
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-04-06T22:16:00Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher ORNL_DAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash c81fd36f5cb40ea0d51367b330b63bcb86cbb07f2296a59d4c5b308bf2fadd18
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial [[{"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90.0,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90.0}],"CARTESIAN"]
temporal 1990-12-31/1990-12-31
theme {"Earth Science"}