Example static tile server for Conservation International Irrecoverable Carbon layers, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00803-6, from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4091028
This dataset maps global "irrecoverable carbon" — carbon stocks that, if lost, cannot be recovered by 2050, making their conservation critical for meeting climate goals. It also includes "manageable carbon" (stocks that can be influenced by human management) and "vulnerable carbon" (total stocks vulnerable to release upon land conversion). The three are nested pools: manageable ⊃ vulnerable ⊃ irrecoverable.
This collection serves the Conservation International v2 (2025) release (Zenodo 17645053), the revised-methodology update of Noon et al. (2022). The earlier v1 (2021) release has been retired as superseded by v2.
(Irrecoverable 2010 is not included — its Zenodo source TIFF has a corrupt IFD and cannot be read.)
Source: Conservation International Project Page: https://www.conservation.org/irrecoverable-carbon Data (v2, 2025 update): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17645053 Citation: Noon, M.L., Goldstein, A., Ledezma, J.C. et al. Mapping the irrecoverable carbon in Earth's ecosystems. Nat Sustain 5, 37–46 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00803-6 License: Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) — non-commercial use only.
Key findings from the 2025 update: 5.4% (7.4 Gt) of Earth's irrecoverable carbon was lost between 2018–2024; CI's published global total is now 128.0 Gt (CI corrected the original 2018 baseline from 139.1 to 135.3 Gt).
Base URL: https://s3-west.nrp-nautilus.io/public-carbon/
Two products per layer: the source Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (carbon density, Mg C ha⁻¹, ~300 m, unchanged from source) and H3 hexagonal parquet (carbon total, Mg C per cell).
Path Pattern: v2/cogs/{category}_c_total_{year}.tif — pixel values are carbon DENSITY in Mg C ha⁻¹.
All COGs are compressed with ZSTD. (Irrecoverable 2010 is absent — corrupt source TIFF.)
Carbon totals at H3 resolution 9 (native), with parent rollups at resolutions 8, 7, 6, 5 as columns, hive-partitioned by H3 resolution 0 (h0).
Path Pattern: {dataset-name}/hex/h0={cell}/data_0.parquet
DuckDB — compare irrecoverable carbon across years (totals in Gt C):
SUM(carbon) over hex rows is directly valid as a carbon TOTAL (no GROUP BY or dedup) — exactly one row per h9 cell. Roll up to coarser resolutions with GROUP BY h8 (or h7/h6/h5) + SUM(carbon).
carbon is computed (and how it validates)The source COGs store carbon density (Mg C ha⁻¹). Each ~300 m pixel's density is multiplied by the pixel's ground area (latitude-dependent on the WGS84 grid) and apportioned to the H3 cells it overlaps — an area-integral that yields total Mg C per cell.
Validation (data-workflows #330): hex SUM(carbon) matches an independent full-resolution area-integral of the source COG to a uniform +0.22% on every layer (a benign H3-cell-area vs exact-pixel discretization offset). These straight area-integrals run ~2–3% above CI's published committed-loss headline figures — e.g. irrecoverable 2024 = 131.9 Gt C here vs CI's 128.0 Gt. Consequently the per-year series is not strictly monotonic in a raw integral (e.g. irrecoverable rises slightly 2023→2024); this reflects the shipped density rasters, not our processing. For committed-loss change figures, cite CI's summary, not a difference of these totals.
"Irrecoverable carbon" identifies stocks where preventing loss is more effective than restoration — the overlap of high carbon density (climate value), low recoverability (cannot regenerate by 2050), and high threat (risk of conversion). The dataset integrates biomass (Spawn et al., Walker et al.), soil carbon (SoilGrids250m), ecosystem vulnerability, and ESA CCI Land Cover for annual conversion tracking.