Quick assessment of where current carbon stocks in the United States are higher and where they are lower can help guide wise decision making about land use and management, encouraging practices that favor carbon storage in soils and plants. This website provides useful and easy-to-navigate web mapping applications and other resources to educate and answer questions about the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inventory, modeling, and mapping of terrestrial biosphere carbon across the United States. CarbonScapes was developed through a collaboration between the USDA and West Virginia University.

Features

Screen capture from the CarbonScapes Atlas mapping application.

• The CarbonScapes Atlas mapping application summarizes reports for specific carbon pools by particular area (county, watershed, and major land resources) within the conterminous United States.
• The CarbonScapes Explorer mapping application provides advanced users with more in-depth tools to visualize and analyze carbon models and associated map layers, as well as the ability to create maps, share geospatial links, and extract GIS data.
• CarbonScapes Data catalogs and links users to USDA terrestrial carbon data and model resources published on Data.gov and other websites.
• CarbonScapes Learn provides an opportunity for users to learn more about carbon.