University of Maryland
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Indicator based upon the Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) gridded global land use maps produced by advanced Earth System Models (ESM) which model the combined pressures of land use conversion and fossil fuel emissions on the carbon-climate system (Hurtt et al. in prep). The pressure data is derived from the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE). Primary vegetation is defined as natural vegetation (either forest or non-forest) that has never been impacted by human activities (e.g. agriculture or wood harvesting) since the start of the time series (850). However, such areas may be indirectly impacted by humans, for instance, through hunting, pollution or the introduction of invasive alien species. They still represent modelled estimates, and the uncertainty associated with the land use present within each particular grid cell increases as we step back in time through the series.