This study was funded by the NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Program (NNX13AJ35A), Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (5131), Norwegian Climate and Forests Initiative through the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch project, DOB Ecology through the World Resources Institute’s Global Restoration Initiative, the NASA Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program (NNX15AK65G), and the NASA Carbon Monitoring Systems Program (NNX13AP48G). We thank T. Loveland, B. Pengra and P. Olofsson for making their tree cover validation data available, C. Dimiceli for assistance with vegetation continuous field development and Z. Song for assistance with AVHRR calibration.

Reviewer information

Nature thanks M. Forkel, L. Zhou and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.