Development of GTAP version 9 Land Use and Land Cover database for years 2004, 2007 and 2011

Understanding the challenges of achieving environmental sustainability goals given future demand for food, fiber and fuel requires economic models and databases that incorporate spatially explicit information on land use and land cover (LULC). The GTAP LULC database and its variants have been extensively used in a wide variety of applications aimed at examining the land-environment-energy nexus. Looking back the development of the first GTAP LULC was no simple task as it required the expertise of several researchers to identify and process relevant geospatial information. And because of this, succeeding updates of the GTAP LULC database (namely v.7 for 2004 and v.8 for 2004, 2007) relied heavily on AEZ-region level data from GTAP LULCv.6 in order to update land cover and land use as well as share-out land rents. This memorandum documents the development of the GTAP LULC v.9 database. In keeping with the multi-year release of GTAP v.9, the GTAP LULC v.9 data is developed for each benchmark year (i.e. 2004, 2007 and 2011). But unlike previous releases, GTAP LULCv.9 is created directly from publicly available high-resolution (i.e. 5-minute grid) spatial land cover and land use maps. Since these maps can be readily downloaded online, it is possible to replicate GTAP LULCv.9 if users know how to handle spatial data and if they follow the methods outlined in this document. Furthermore, by developing the capacity to handle spatial data within the Center, new spatial LULC information can be easily incorporated in future releases of the GTAP LULC.