FAO Global Ecological Zones

Parameter

FAO Global Ecological Zones


Represented classes

Tropical rain forest TAr

Tropical moist deciduous forest TAwa

Tropical dry forest TAwb

Tropical shrubland TBSh

Tropical desert TBWh

Tropical mountain systems TM

Subtropical humid forest

Subtropical dry forest SCs

Subtropical steppe SBSh

Subtropical desert SBWh

Subtropical mountain systems SM

Temperate oceanic forest TeDo

Temperate continental forest TeDc

Temperate steppe TeBSk

Temperate desert TeBWk

Temperate mountain systems TeM

Boreal coniferous forest Ba

Boreal tundra woodland Bb

Boreal mountain systems BM

Polar P


Description

The Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) presents global and regional forest data by global ecological zone (GEZ). The GEZ spatial dataset used by FAO has developed over the years from covering only the tropical areas (1990) to the globe (2000). Due to the developments in remote sensing and the compiling of many spatial products relating to climate and land cover between 2000 and 2010, an update to the map was commissioned and resulted in the available GEZ 2010 product .

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Source data

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Global Ecological Zones

Description

The purpose of creating the FAO Forest Ecological Zones and associated map is to enable the presentation of some of the FAO forest statistics and maps to be shown by a set of classes that have some ecological meaning that can be more generally understood as broad forest types (e.g. tropical rain forests, boreal forests etc.).

Spatial resolution

Global coverage

Pixel size:

10km x 10km

Temporal resolution

GEZ 2010 product