Summary
The global HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment (HILDA+) aims to provide global land use/land cover maps at a high level of spatial, temporal and thematic detail. The data spans 1960-2019 and is at one kilometer spatial resolution. HILDA+ provides free downloadable data on annual land use/cover states and transitions. A map viewer accompanies the data.
According to authors, HILDA+ uses a “data-driven reconstruction approach and integrates multiple open data streams from high-resolution remote sensing, long-term land use reconstructions, and statistics.” It covers six land use/cover categories: 1) urban areas, 2) cropland, 3) pasture/rangeland, 4) forest, 5) unmanaged grass/shrubland, and 6) sparse/no vegetation.
The development of HILDA+ and some associated findings are published in Nature Communications, which is summarized here. The article’s Supplemental Information section includes a list of the datasets used to develop HILDA+.