Cloud-optimized versions of global and US alnd cover data. Currently GLS-LC100 CC-BY-4.0 + NLCD. public-domain
Global land cover classification at 100 m resolution for 2019, from the Copernicus Global Land Service Land Cover product v3.0.1 (Collection 3). Uses the FAO Land Cover Classification System (LCCS); overall accuracy ~80%.
License: CC-BY-4.0. Source: https://zenodo.org/records/3939050.
The hex layer aggregates the source raster to H3 resolution 9 (~174 m edge,
~10 source pixels per cell) by mode (most frequent class per cell). One row per
h9 cell. lc_class is categorical — only the 23 canonical LCCS codes appear.
Re-hexed on the antimeridian/polar-fixed pipeline (boettiger-lab/datasets #88, #92,
#93); the prior resolution-8 build inflated and dropped cells at the ±180° seam
(boettiger-lab/data-workflows #186).
lc_class is a class code — never SUM or AVG it. To estimate the area of a
class, count distinct cells and multiply by the H3 resolution-9 cell area:
Parent indexes h8, h7, h6, h5 are present for multi-scale joins; partition on
h0 to prune reads.
The raster has no PMTiles layer; render the COG through a TiTiler XYZ endpoint:
Value 0 ("No input data") is a retained fill class; the COG GDAL NoData sentinel is 255.
Buchhorn, M., Lesiv, M., Tsendbazar, N-E., Herold, M., Bertels, L., Smets, B. (2020). Copernicus Global Land Cover Layers — Collection 2. Remote Sensing, 12(6), 1044. doi:10.3390/rs12061044
canopy-height-2020)Canopy top height for 2020 at 10 m, 60 S to 84 N, from Lang et al. (2023, ETH Zurich): a deep learning model trained on GEDI lidar and applied to Sentinel-2 imagery. It comes with the model's predictive standard deviation, a per-pixel uncertainty. Built-up areas, snow, ice and permanent water are masked (255).
The VRTs index the producers' own 3-degree cloud-optimized GeoTIFF tiles (in height/tiles/ and sd/tiles/) with relative paths, so GDAL opens them over https or S3. Heights are whole metres; values above about 80 m are artefacts (a handful of cells, mostly at high latitude).
Lang, N., Jetz, W., Schindler, K., & Wegner, J. D. (2023). A high-resolution canopy height model of the Earth. Nature Ecology & Evolution, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02206-6. Data: ETH Global Canopy Height 2020, version 1, https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000609802, downloaded 2026-10-29 from the producers' share (https://langnico.github.io/globalcanopyheight/); tiles are published unchanged, with sizes and sha256 in s3://public-land-cover/raw/canopy-height-2020/manifest/. CC BY 4.0.
| Permanent water bodies |
| 124 |
| Open forest, deciduous broad leaf |
| 90 | Herbaceous wetland | 125 | Open forest, mixed |
| 100 | Moss and lichen | 126 | Open forest, unknown |
| 111 | Closed forest, evergreen needle leaf | 200 | Open sea |