Soil Projects > Support to Renewable Energy Directive
Thematic Data Layers for Commission Decision of [10 June 2010] on guidelines for the calculation of land carbon stocks for the purpose of Annex V to Directive 2009/28/EC
1. Climatic Zone
The Climatic Zone layer is defined based on the classification of IPCC (IPCC, 2006). The zones are defined by a set of rules based on :
- annual mean daily temperature,
- total annual precipitation,
- total annual potential evapo-transpiration (PET) and
- elevation.
The classification presented as Figure 3A.5.1 Classification scheme for default climate regions” (IPCC, 2006) could not be accessed in electronic form and generated from an independently developed set of base data layers. Climatic information on temperature and precipitation was provided by the 5 arc min. dataset Version 1.4 from the WorldClim project (Hijmans et al., 2005). PET was computed according to the temperature-based formula investigated by Oudin et al. (2005) and used by Kay & Davis (2008). The computation of the extraterrestrial radiation was based on Duffie & Beckman (1991) and Allen et al. (1994). The formulas were supplemented by the information provided by the “Solar Radiation Basis” Web-page of the University of Oregon: http://solardat.uoregon.edu/SolarRadiationBasics.html.
2. Soil Type Classification
Soil types are classified according to the World Reference Base (WRB). The scheme for translating soil types into IPCC classes is presented “Figure 3A.5.4 Classification scheme for mineral soil types based on World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) classification” (IPCC, 2006). The layer was generated by applying the IPCC soil classification to the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD; http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/luc07/External-World-soil-database/HTML/index.html) (Fisher et al., 2008) from IIASA and FAO.
3. Common Spatial Layer Specifications
The thematic layers are stored in Idrisi file format. The technical specifications of the spatial data layers are given in Table 1.
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Data type | 16-bit integer |
| File type | binary |
| No. of columns | 4320 |
| No of rows | 2160 |
| Reference system | ETRS89* |
| Reference units | Degrees |
| Min. x coordinate | -180.00 |
| Max. x coordinate | 180.00 |
| Min. y coordinate | -90.00 |
| Max. y coordinate | 90.00 |
* Annoni, et al., 2001
References
Allen, R.G., M. Smith, A. Perrier and L.S. Pereira, 1994. An update for the calculation of reference Evapotranspiration. ICID Bulletin of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage 43(2). p. 35-92.
Annoni, A., C. Luzet, E. Gubler and J. Ihnde (2001) Map Projections for Europe. European Commission Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy. EUR 20120 EN. 131pp.
Duffie, J. A. and W.A. Beckman, 1991. Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes, 2nd ed. J. Wiley and Sons, New York. 919pp.
Fischer, G., F. Nachtergaele, S. Prieler, H.T. van Velthuizen, L. Verelst, and D.Wiberg, 2008. Global Agro-ecological Zones Assessment for Agriculture (2008). IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria and FAO, Rome, Italy. http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/luc07/External-World-soil-database/HTML/index.html?sb=1
Hijmans, R.J., S.E. Cameron, J.L. Parra, P.G. Jones and A. Jarvis, 2005. Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology 25, p.1965-1978. http://www.worldclim.org/current
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2006. IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories – Volume 4. Egglestone, H.S., L. Buendia, K. Miwa, T. Ngara and K. Tanabe (Eds). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), IPCC/IGES, Hayama, Japan. http://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol4.html
Kay, A.L. and H.N. Davis, 2008. Calculating potential evapotranspiration from climate model data: A source of uncertainty for hydrological climate change impacts. Journal of Hydrology (358) p. 221-239.
Oudin, L., F. Hervieu, C. Michel, C. Perrin, V. Andréassian, F. Anctil and C. Loumagne, 2005. Which potential evapotranspiration input for a limped rainfall-runoff model? Part 2 - Towards a simple and efficient potential evaportranspiration model for rainfall-runoff modelling. Journal of Hydrology 303, p. 290-306.
| Important legal notice © European Communities, 1995- Last updated: |
European Commission - Joint
Research Centre Institute for Environment and Sustainability Contacts: Marc Van Liedekerke(tel. +39-0332-785179) Panos Panagos (tel. +39-0332-785574) |
Completed Projects
CASCADE
Additional data