This resource is part of the publication by Hansen et al. (2013) represents "tree cover in the year 2000, defined as canopy closure for all vegetation taller than 5m in height. Encoded as a percentage per output grid cell, in the range 0–100." Due to changes in the satellites products used in the compilation of the treecover product, results before the year 2011 and afterwards are not directly comparable until reprocessing has finished. Users should be aware of this limitation, especially when the timeframe of the analysis spans over the two periods delimited by the year 2011.
References
Hansen, M. C., P. V. Potapov, R. Moore, M. Hancher, S. A. Turubanova, A. Tyukavina, D. Thau, S. V. Stehman, S. J. Goetz, T. R. Loveland, A. Kommareddy, A. Egorov, L. Chini, C. O. Justice, and J. R. G. Townshend. 2013. “High-Resolution Global Maps of 21st-Century Forest Cover Change.” Science 342 (15 November): 850–53.