• What is MapBiomas?

    MapBiomas is an initiative of the Climate Observatory and a collaborative network of non-governmental organizations, universities and companies in Brazil, organized with the objective of using quality and low-cost technology to produce annual series of maps (from 1985 onwards).

  • What is MapBiomas Peru?

    MapBiomas Perú es una iniciativa coordinada por el Instituto del Bien Común, y fue creada en conjunto con la Red Amazónica de Información Socioambiental Georreferenciada (RAISG). Su objetivo es generar mapas anuales de cobertura y uso del suelo para toda el Perú (1985-2022), con base en la metodología construida por el equipo de Mapbiomas.

  • Who produces the maps of MapBiomas Peru?

    MapBiomas Peru involves researchers and specialists in remote sensing, informatics, ecosystems, and land use from Peru. All work is done using cloud computing through the Google Earth Engine platform.

  • How can I download maps from MapBiomas Peru?

    The land use land land cover maps and Landsat mosaics can be downloaded through the following link: MapBiomas Peru Collections

    In this link you will find a tool in Google Earth Engine that allows the download of the complete collection, as well as the download by specific territorial or temporal slices.

    Don't forget to download the legend codes at: Legend Codes

  • Why do the downloaded files have several layers of data?

    Each layer represents a year in the time series. For example, in Collection 2.0, layer 0 = 1985 and layer 37 = 2022.

  • Why are maps shown only in raster format?

    Las grandes series temporales y los mapas de cobertura y uso del suelo generados en la escala que trabaja MapBiomas Perú (píxeles de 30 m) no son prácticos en formato vectorial. Todo el procesamiento de datos se realiza en formato ráster, píxel por píxel.

  • Can I download the data in Shapefile format?

    No existe esa posibilidad en la plataforma MapBiomas Perú. La vectorización de mapas es extremadamente costosa en términos de recursos computacionales y poco práctica para todo el territorio. La solución recomendada, si desea trabajar con vector, es descargar los datos, realizar el recorte territorial o espacial de su interés y luego vectorizar con su software de preferencia.

  • Is the data of MapBiomas Peru public?

    Yes, the data of MapBiomas Peru is public and free for non-commercial use or for public interest purposes.

  • Is it possible to work with the data of MapBiomas Peru in the cloud without having to download it?

    Yes, the MapBiomas Peru collections are available as layers (assets) in the Google Earth Engine platform and can be accessed, processed and analyzed directly on the platform without the need to download the data. To obtain the IDs of the MapBiomas Peru collections the Google Earth Engine, go to: https://peru.mapbiomas.org/herramientas/

  • How can I access the data of MapBiomas Peru in Google Earth Engine?

    It is necessary to have an account in Google Earth Engine (GEE), which can be created through the following link: https://earthengine.google.com

    By accessing the GEE Code Editor (https://code.earthengine.google.com ) you can start scripts to view and process data. In this link you will find examples of scripts to access the MapBiomas Pampa Sudamericano data in Google Earth Engine:  https://peru.mapbiomas.org/herramientas/

  • How can I cite data of MapBiomas Peru?

    MapBiomas Peru data are public and free, you can make use of them by simply referring to the source with the following format: 

    “MapBiomas Peru Project - Collection [number] of the Annual Land Cover and Land Use Series for Peru, acquired [date] through the link: [LINK]”

    "MapBiomas Peru Project - is an initiative of the Instituto del Bien Común (IBC) with the multi-institutional co-creation of RAISG to generate annual cover and land use maps from automatic classification processes applied to satellite images." The full description of the project can be found at http://peru.mapbiomas.org

  • Where do I find the detailed description of the legend?

    The detailed legend description with the correspondent code (raster) is available for download at:
    https://peru.mapbiomas.org/codigos-de-la-leyenda/

  • Can I download tabular and statistical data of the land use and land cover maps? For which territorial subsets?

    Yes, land use land cover statistics, as well as transition matrices for the country, biomes, regiones, provinces and districts are available for download at: https://peru.mapbiomas.org/estadisticas/

  • How to download maps from a region or province?

    To download the data by region of province, they can be generated with Google Earth Engine, accessing the scripts available at the link. You must select the region, the province, the years of interest and export it to your Google Drive folder.

    Toolkit: Land Use Land Cover Maps

  • How is the area of raster data of MapBiomas Peru calculated?

    Landsat has an average resolution of 30 m, so it is common to associate the area of a pixel to 900 m2. But, since the original MapBiomas Peru data are created following the GEE standard representation (Lat/Long and WGS84), it does not use an equivalent projection (equal area). Therefore, the distance from the target to the Equator line influences the pixel size. Therefore, at continental scale, the calculation of pixel count and multiplication by 900 m2 should be avoided. 

    In MapBiomas Peru we apply two methods to calculate the area:

    1 - When performed outside Google Earth Engine, we reproduce the MapBiomas Peru datum for the UTM system and calculate the metric value of the central pixel, located at the intersection between the reference 1: 250,000 chart and the area of interest. Then, we count all the pixels within the area of interest and multiply by the reference value, in m², of the central pixel previously calculated. 

    2 - When the calculation is performed in Google Earth Engine, we apply the function ee.Image.pixelArea () which generates an image in which the value of each pixel is the area of that pixel in square meters, taking into account possible cartographic distortions.

  • Which maps were used as a reference for the mapping?

    You can access the description of all the reference maps used by MapBiomas Peru at: https://peru.mapbiomas.org/mapas-de-referencia

  • How are the biomes of Peru defined?

    A biome is the grouping of ecological systems that share the same climatic (temperature, precipitation) and geographic (topography, altitude, among others) criteria and that preserves a common flora and fauna.

    The limits of the four biomes of Peru was prepared by the Instituto del Bien Común, using as a reference the National Map of Ecosystems of Peru (MINAM, 2019) and the biome map proposed by Dinerstein et al, 2017 (https://ecoregions.appspot.com/).