RLC Forest Stand Carbon Map of Russia

This dataset is a 1:15 million scale map of forest stand carbon for the land area of Russia (Stone et al., 2000). The objective was to create a first approximation of the forest stand carbon reserves of Russia. Data include continuous estimates of forest stand carbon in units of metric tons/ha of carbon (C) and categorized data depicting rages of forest stand carbon. The resulting maps show forest stand C by region in a spatially explicit form. It is the first map of its type for Russia of which we are aware. The mapped C represents 96% of the total of 26.1 Pg forest tree stand C described by Alexeyev and Birdsey (1994) and Alexeyev et al. (1995). Of the remaining 4%, nearly half was due to bushes, which were assumed not to be mapped in the 1973 forest cover map.The source data for the forest stand carbon map were acquired by map digitization from the Atlas of Forests for the Soviet Union (State Committee on Forests, 1973) and spatial application and arithmetic manipulation of carbon storage data from Alexeyev and Birdsey (1998).