Relative Productivity Index data for Kenya and northern Tanzania v2, 2000-2023

This record contains updated datasets for the Relative Productivity Index (RPI) calculated for rangelands in Kenya and Northern Tanzania.

This is unpublished work and is subject to further change and development - please do not share widely.

RPI is a unitless index describing the ratio between observed annual gross primary productivity and the potential productivity estimated from climatic and other biophysical conditions. See the paper for further detail on the methods: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2025.113208.

This version of the dataset includes further enhancements to the method that have considerably improved performance, especially in controlling for climatic drivers of temporal variability in GPP.

The three files included are:

1. actual_gpp_ea_v2.tif - integrated annual GPP estimates for 22 hydrological years (September-August) from September 2000 to August 2023, based on the PML_V2 ET and GPP dataset.
2. potential_gpp_ea_v2.tif - the estimated potential GPP for each grid cell and hydrological year based on a quantile regression forest model with climatic, topographic and soil predictors (using the 90th percentile of predicted GPP as the potential).
3. rpi_ea_v2.tif - the relative productivity index values, defined as the ratio between actual and potential GPP in a given grid cell and hydrological year.

All raster files have a spatial resolution of ~500m and report annual values.

Please contact G.Lomax@exeter.ac.uk before using this data in any published products, outputs or visualisations.