QUEST projects both used and produced an immense variety of global data sets that needed to be shared efficiently between the project teams. These global synthesis data sets are also a key part of QUEST's legacy, providing a powerful way of communicating the results of QUEST among and beyond the UK Earth System research community.

This dataset contains MODIS land cover classification data.

The MODIS Land Cover Type product contains multiple classification schemes, which describe land cover properties derived from observations spanning a year's input of Terra and Aqua data. The primary land cover scheme identifies 17 land cover classes defined by the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which includes 11 natural vegetation classes, 3 developed and mosaicked land classes, and three non-vegetated land classes. The MODIS Terra + Aqua Land Cover Type Yearly L3 Global 500 m SIN Grid product incorporates five different land cover classification schemes, derived through a supervised decision-tree classification method:

* Land Cover Type 1: IGBP global vegetation classification scheme
* Land Cover Type 2: University of Maryland (UMD) scheme
* Land Cover Type 3: MODIS-derived LAI/fPAR scheme
* Land Cover Type 4: MODIS-derived Net Primary Production (NPP) scheme
* Land Cover Type 5: Plant Functional Type (PFT) scheme

The dataset stored here has been aggregated onto a 10 arc minute grid by Jose Gomez-Dans, working within the QUEST FIREMAFS project.