6.Data Publication and Availability

This chapter describes good practices for publishing and facilitating the access of maps, data and communication support materials produced by MapBiomas for different audiences on platforms, websites and through other channels and tools. 

This section describes the MapBiomas data, information on data spatial subsets, customization of legend and ancillary layers and communication of data updating. 

• MapBiomas data includes maps, mosaics, statistics, and validation points in different formats (rasters, tables, shapefiles, graphs and pdfs);

• The data must be available considering a set of territories that make sense in the reality of each country/region (see more information in item 2.4 of the Scope Chapter) and access to all data must be facilitated for the different user profiles;

• The ancillary layers used to generate maps and statistics, including administrative boundaries, are the responsibility of the technical teams of each country/region and must follow the formatting standard detailed in the item 4. Territory shapefiles of the Data Storage and Organization Chapter;

• Legend items and ancillary layers can be adjusted according to the reference country, following local legislation when applicable;

• It is very important to publish the date of availability of files and statistics. Whenever there is an update to any published information, it is necessary to release a communication describing the adjustment and informing the publication date of the new files (updates can be compiled in a public LOG).  It includes the Informative Notes in the dashboard (published and update data), a notice and/or press release in the website and all related materials (e.g. factsheet, statistics table, legend documents, ATBD, infographic, etc.).

This section describes the publication of data and other products such as ATBDS, reference maps, communication support materials, among others, on the website, in the data platform and through other tools and services.

2.1 Website

• All maps and data should be available for download openly and free of charge in different formats on the MapBiomas’ websites (see more details in the Communication Chapter);

• Products related to the legends must also be made publicly available, as described in the item 1.3 of the Legend Chapter;

• It is desirable to have a context sentence for  each product in the Downloads webpages;

• It is recommended to make available a specific webpage to download the statistics of the different products;

• On the Downloads webpage, it is recommended to make the data (such as maps collections, statistics, legend documents, highlights, infographics, mural maps, etc) available in the order of greatest to least importance and frequency of  access;

• Other communication support materials, as well as technical and scientific publications, should be available with summaries and analysis of data and results (see more information in the Communication chapter);

• Maps should be available in Geotiff format by year on the Download/Collection Maps page. The ID of the public asset in GEE should also be informed on the Download/Collection Maps page;

• Tables in .XLSX format with quantitative data on land cover and land use and transitions must be available for the different territories of interest in the country/region on the Maps and Data/Statistics page and on the Download/Statistics page;

• Ancillary layers used for statistical calculations must be available on the Download/Layers page, informing the category, layers’ name, source, scale, data of last update and url for download (see an example here);

• ATBDs should be available on the Methods page;

• Links to maps used as references during the production of the MapBiomas collection should be on the Download/Reference Maps page, informing the map/product name, source/author, description and link for download (see an example here);

• The points used to estimate accuracy should be available on the Download/Accuracy Points page.

2.2 Data platform

• MapBiomas platforms allow the visualization of maps, graphs and tables for the general public, allowing the selection of initiatives, products, modules, territories and time periods of interest to the user, in addition to sharing maps and downloading tables and graphs;

• It is recommended to include on the platforms tools for viewing and downloading ancillary layers of interest (administrative boundaries, river basins, biomes, protected areas, etc. providing for each layer the source citation), downloading the Sankey Diagram in the Transitions product, 3D map viewing, sharing of figures, viewing the geographic coordinates of the pixel, and the pixel information tool (containing, for example, class history, state, municipality, river basin, biome, geographic coordinates and land ownership);

• When opening each platform module, it is necessary to provide to the user an information note relating to that product/module (see more detail in item 4.3 of the Quality Control Chapter);

• The platforms must have a tool that links with the website of the initiative that reproduces webpages menu, allowing an integrated exploration of the data provided and the reference documents;

• Each initiative/module should include a link to a document that supports the understanding of classes such as the Legend Description or the Class characterization documents in the land cover and land use module (see more in the item 1.3 of the Legend Chapter).

2.3 Tools and services

• Maps should be available as public assets on GEE;

• Toolkits should be available for selecting and downloading maps for specific regions and years (e.g. Land cover and land use and Water toolkits);

• MapBiomas Map collections must be available also through the MapBiomas Plugin for QGIS;

• The codes used by MapBiomas to produce the maps, including classification, spatial and temporal filters, data integration, generation of transitions and calculation of statistics, among others, should be available in the MapBiomas code repository on GitHub. Access at: https://github.com/mapbiomas-brazil,