This data set provides forest age map products at 1-km resolution for Canada and the United States (U.S.A.). These continental forest age maps were compiled from forest inventory data, historical fire data, optical satellite data, and the images from NASA’s Landsat Ecosystem Disturbance Adaptive Processing System (LEDAPS) project. These input data products have various sources and creation dates as described in the source paper by Pan et al. (2011). Canadian maps were produced with data available through 2004 and U.S.A. maps with data available through 2006. A supplementary map of the standard deviations for age estimates was developed for quantifying uncertainty.

Note that the Pan et al. (2011) paper is included as a companion file with this data set and was the source of descriptions in the guide.

Forest age, implicitly reflecting the past disturbance legacy, is a simple and direct surrogate for the time since disturbance and may be used in various forest carbon analyses that concern the impact of disturbances. By combining geographic information about forest age with estimated carbon dynamics by forest type, it is possible to conduct a simple but powerful analysis of the net CO2 uptake by forests, and the potential for increasing (or decreasing) this rate as a result of direct human intervention in the disturbance/age status.