• The Korean Journal of Ecology
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.403-416
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• 1996

Global natural vegetation mapping (GNVM) system was developed for estimating potential forest area of the globe. With input of monthly mean temperature and monthly precipitation observed at weather stations, the system spherically interpolates them into 1°×1°grid points on a blobe, converts them into vegetation types, and produces a potential vegetation map and a potenital vegetation area. The spherical interpolation was based on negative exponential function fed from the constant radius stations with oval weighing method which is latitudinally elongated weighing in temperature and longitudinally elongated weighing in precipitation. The temperature values were corrected for altitude by applying a linear lapse-rate (0.65℃ / 100m) with reference to a built-in digital terrain map of the globe. The vegetation classification was based upon Koppen’s sKDICe. The potential forest area is estimated for 6.96 Gha (46.24％) of the global land area (15.05 Gha).