Modelled potential carbon storage based on land cover and published carbon storage values in urban landscapes of the South Midlands

This dataset shows potential carbon storage as modelled for the urban areas of Milton Keynes/Newport Pagnell, Bedford, and Luton/Dunstable, UK. The modelling approach used the ‘InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs) 3.1.0’ ecosystem service model suite, raster land cover maps at two spatial resolutions (5 m and 25 m) and published literature values for carbon storage by land cover. The resulting data are presented in the form of two ‘GeoTIFF’ raster map files (and associated metadata and spatial information files required by software) that can be viewed and manipulated in Geographic Information Software. The units are kg C per square meter. The purpose of the modelling was to help assess and visualise the value that urban green space represents to urban residents and natural systems in just one of many ecosystem services. This research was conducted as part of the larger 'Fragments, Functions, Flows and Urban Ecosystem Services' (F3UES) programme. Detailed methods and results of this analysis are published in: Grafius DR, Corstanje R, Warren PH, et al (2016) The impact of land use/land cover scale on modelling urban ecosystem services. Landsc Ecol 31:1509–1522. doi: 10.1007/s10980-015-0337-7. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/9209af2c-24f6-4e37-98fe-550032e97a2c