Development of the GTAP 7 Land Use Data Base

The land-use augmented version of the GTAP Data Base has been used for a wide variety of applications (T. W. Hertel, Rose, & Tol, 2009). It builds on global land cover and land use data bases documented in Monfreda et al. (2008) and Ramankutty and Foley (1999) as well as global forestry data developed by Sohngen and Tennity (2004). The methodology for integrating this information into the GTAP-AEZ framework is documented by Lee et al. (2009). The underlying land use data were developed with a base year circa 2001 (The sub-national land use data varied in availability and spanned the period 1997-2003). The original GTAP-AEZ data base incorporated this information into the version 6 GTAP Data Base, with a benchmark year of 2001. Subsequently the GTAP Data Base (version 7) has been updated to 2004, and the version 8 data base will be released in 2011 with a base year of 2007. This memorandum documents how the land use data has been updated from 2001 to 2004 for use in the version 7 data base, by time series data on land cover developed by Navin Ramankutty and national production and harvested area data from the FAO. If a new version of the Monfreda et al. data base does not become available by 2011, this same approach could be used to update the land use data to the 2007 benchmark used in GTAP v.8.