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High Res Land Cover Change & Carbon Storage Pakistan (1990-2020)

This dataset, generated from the study titled _Urbanization-led land cover change impacts terrestrial carbon storage capacity: A high-resolution remote sensing-based nation-wide assessment in Pakistan (1990–2020), provides high-resolution, national-scale Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) and terrestrial carbon stock maps for Pakistan across four time periods: 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020. The LULC dataset includes nine distinct land cover classes (outlined in the table below). Classification was performed using a hybrid random forest-based machine learning approach, with model training and validation carried out using approximately 40,000 stratified random samples to ensure robust accuracy.

The carbon stock maps were produced using the InVEST model, estimating carbon storage across four major carbon pools: above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass, soil organic carbon, and dead organic matter. The results highlight a substantial reduction in carbon storage capacity due to rapid urban expansion, particularly in major cities such as Karachi and Lahore, where large areas of forest and agricultural land were converted into urban landscapes. The study estimates that Pakistan lost approximately 5% of its carbon storage capacity during this period, while urban areas expanded by over 1040%. For more details, you can read the full paper here.

Citation

Waleed, M., Sajjad, M., & Shazil, M. S. (2024). Urbanization-led land cover change impacts terrestrial carbon storage capacity: A high-resolution remote sensing-based nation-wide assessment in Pakistan (1990–2020). Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 105, 107396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2023.107396

Dataset Citation

Mirza, W. (2024). Pakistan 30m land use land cover and carbon storage dataset (1990-2020) [Data set]. In Urbanization-led land cover change impacts terrestrial carbon storage
capacity: A high-resolution remote sensing-based nation-wide assessment in Pakistan (1990–2020). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2023.107396

Dataset Preprocessing

The image files for both landcover and carbon stock were moved into single collections and date ranges were added for easily filtering across there.

For more details, visit:

LULC Classification Table

LULC Class Class Value Visual
Forest Cover 1 #54bb19
Agriculture/Cropland 3 #affd08
Rangeland 4 #d1fbb9
Wetlands 5 #652ff3
Barren Lands 6 #fed483
Water Bodies 7 #005ce6
Built-up Areas 8 #e50600
Snow/Ice 9 #fe4fcd

LULC App Static Image

Earth Engine Snippet

var landcover = ee.ImageCollection("projects/sat-io/open-datasets/pk-lulc");
var carbon = ee.ImageCollection("projects/sat-io/open-datasets/pk-carbon-stock");

Sample Code: https://code.earthengine.google.com/?scriptPath=users/sat-io/awesome-gee-catalog-examples:regional-landuse-landcover/PK-LANCOVER-CARBON-STOCK

The dataset is also available as interactive Google Earth Engine (GEE) applications.

Enter license information

This dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Provided by: Waleed et al 2024

Curated in GEE by: Samapriya Roy

Keywords: land use, land cover, pakistan, lulc, carbon, urban, InVEST model

Last updated in GEE: 2024-11-13

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