Global Grid of Probabilities of Urban Expansion to 2030

The Global Grid of Probabilities of Urban Expansion to 2030 presents spatially explicit probabilistic forecasts of global urban land cover change from 2000 to 2030 at a 2.5 arc-minute resolution. Grid cell values 0 to 100 represent the probability of the area becoming urban by the year 2030. Grid cells with value 101 refer to existing urban areas circa 2000 based on the global urban extent map from MODIS Land Cover Type Product Version 5. For each grid cell that is non-urban in 2000, a Monte-Carlo model assigned a probability of becoming urban by the year 2030.

Although regions were not excluded in the creation of these data some small urban areas, such as Tromso and Norilsk, are missing. This is a result of resampling the input land-cover data from 463 meters to 5 kilometers as described in the documentation.

The data may be downloaded via the World Wide Web at here [http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/lulc-global-grid-prob-urban-expansion-2030].

See: Seto, K., B. Güneralp, and L.R. Hutyra. 2012. Global Forecasts of Urban Expansion to 2030 and Direct Impacts on Biodiversity and Carbon Pools. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109 (40): 16083-16088 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211658109].