SPATIAL LINKAGE AND URBAN EXPANSION: AN URBAN AGGLOMERATION VIEW

China’s forests play a crucial role in storing carbon and mitigating climate change, yet long-term, high-resolution data on their biomass have been limited. We developed a 30-m annual forest aboveground biomass dataset from 1985 to 2023 using satellite data and deep learning. Our results reveal significant biomass gains, regional variations, and the impact of forest policies. This dataset provides valuable insights for climate research, conservation planning, and sustainable forest management.

Most existing building height products are limited with respect to either spatial resolution or coverage, not to mention the spatial heterogeneity introduced by global building forms. Using Earth Observation (EO) datasets for 2020, we developed a global height dataset at the individual building scale. The dataset provides spatially explicit information on 3D building morphology, supporting both macro- and microanalysis of urban areas.

The currently available urban canopy parameter (UCP) datasets are limited to just a few cities for urban climate simulations by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. To address this gap, we develop a global 1 km spatially continuous UCP dataset (GloUCP), which provides superior spatial coverage and higher accuracy in capturing urban morphology across diverse regions. It has great potential to support further advancements in urban climate modeling and related applications.

Absence of globally consistent and spatially continuous urban surface properties have long prevented large-scale high-resolution urban climate modeling. We developed the U-Surf data, a 1km-resolution dataset that provides key urban surface properties worldwide. U-Surf enhances urban representation in models, enables city-to-city comparison, and supports kilometer-scale Earth system modeling. Its broader applications can be extended to machine learning and many other non-climatic practices.

Most existing global urban products with future projections were developed in urban and non-urban categories, which ignores the gradual change of urban development at the local scale. Using annual global urban extent data from 1985 to 2015, we forecasted global urban fractional changes under eight scenarios throughout 2100. The developed dataset can provide spatially explicit information on urban fractions at 1 km resolution, which helps support various urban studies (e.g., urban heat island).