summary: This dataset was developed to understand the consequences of historical changes in land use and land cover for ecosystem goods and services. In particular, the data sets can be used to study how global land-cover changes have influenced climate, biogeochemical cycles, water cycle, biodiversity, etc. This data set can be used directly within spatially-explicit climate and biogeochemical models. The data are unique by providing a complete reconstruction of the past, and, in terms of details in land-cover types and methodology, are also relatively flexible to implement in other models. The dataset provides new avenues for climate models to study how uncertainties in historical land-cover change translate into uncertainties in quantifying its impacts on environmental variables of interest.
