The plant functional type (PFT) distribution was created by combining auxiliary data products with the CCI Medium Resolution Land Cover (MRLC) map series. The land cover (LC) classification provides the broad characteristics of the 300 m pixel, including the expected vegetation form(s) (tree, shrub, grass) and/or abiotic land type(s) (water, bare area, snow and ice, built-up) in the pixel. For some classes, the class legend specifies an expected range for the fractional covers of the contributing PFTs and broadly differentiates between natural and cultivated vegetation. We used a quantitative, globally consistent method that fuses the 300-metre MRLC product with a suite of existing high-resolution datasets to develop spatially explicit annual maps of PFT fractional composition at 300 metres. The new PFT product exhibits intraclass spatial variability in PFT fractional cover at the 300-metre pixel level and is complementary to the MRLC maps since the derived PFT fractions maintain consistency with the original LC class legend.

This dataset was generated to reduce the cross-walking component of uncertainty by adding spatial variability to the PFT composition within a LC class. This work moved beyond fine-tuning the cross-walking approach for specific LC classes or regions and, instead, separately quantifies the PFT fractional composition for each 300 m pixel globally. The result is a dataset representing the cover fractions of 14 PFTs at 300 m for each year within the time range, consistent with the CCI MRLC LC maps for the corresponding year.