Global Forest Aboveground Carbon Stocks and Fluxes from GEDI and ICESat-2, 2018-2021

This dataset provides global gridded estimates of forest aboveground carbon stocks and potential fluxes at a 0.01-degree resolution. It was derived by initializing a newly developed global Ecosystem Demography model (ED v3.0) with novel remote sensing observations of tree canopy height collected by GEDI and ICESat-2, two NASA spaceborne lidar missions. A total of 3.77 billion lidar samples were used to generate gridded canopy height histograms that were then linked to ED simulations of canopy height and carbon dynamics during ecosystem succession. This process constrained representation of contemporary forest conditions and associated carbon stocks and fluxes in the model. Inputs that drove these simulations included meteorology, carbon dioxide levels, and soil properties. The data are provided in cloud-optimized GeoTIFF format.