Dear Kuber,

There are many maps showing the global distribution of vegetation, because that has been a concern for centuries: a Google search for "global map vegetation" yielded 19,500,000 links! Over the last few decades, these maps have been generated using satellite data, because they offer consistent coverage over the planet as well as repeated observations in time.

From a remote sensing point of view, continental surfaces are often obscured in such images, due to the presence of clouds or dense aerosol layers. However, repeated observations will usually permit the mapping of vegetation just about everywhere. The one area that is consistently difficult to observe from space in the solar spectral range is the Equatorial belt, because of the ubiquitous and persistent presence of clouds. However, even here, it is possible to acquire other types of measurements, for instance in the microwave domain, which may be interpreted to some extent in terms of vegetation properties. For these reasons, there are no major areas of the world that are not systematically monitored by Earth Observation satellites, so it is highly unlikely that you saw a recent global vegetation map with "data gaps".

However, you may have seen a map showing the availability of ground-based (in situ) measurements: here the situation is very different, as there are many areas that have not been visited (for instance because they may be "off limit" or practically unreachable), or simply because of lack of resources to do so. Hence, if you are asking for a global map exhibiting field measurements of species composition, or some other vegetation property that is observable only through visits on the spot, then the vast majority of the world is actually unchartered.

It might perhaps be easier to help you if you indicate what you'd like to do and what specific information (or map) would be most useful to you, whether you have seen it before or not.

Best regards, Michel.

try EVI from iri website

Dear Michel M. Verstraete, Napoleon Ono Imaah and Mohammed Abd Alla Eltoum, thank you for your suggestions. Actually I was looking for the 'spatial distribution of registered plots of vegetation survey' that would give me an idea of how much vegetation sampling has been conducted (thus the data would be readily available) at a particular region of the world.

Try for United States Geological Survey (USGS) Global Land Cover Change (GLCC) data. However, you need special software to visualize the digital data. 

See if this map solves your purpose. This is 2012 satellite data. This is about 5km resolution data, but you can get higher resolution upto 1 km also.

Regards,

Kishore

Dear Kuber,

Here is what you are looking for: http://www.givd.info.

Check also: http://euroveg.org/eva-database.

All the best,

Tiago

Dear Tiago Monteiro-Henriques,

Exactly !!! it is the map which I was looking for...

Thank you very much ! 

I'd suggest you to search the WorldGrids database of global land cover maps. You'll find almost all the best available procucts.

http://worldgrids.org/doku.php/wiki:land_cover_and_land_use

Dear Kuber,

You can useful information’s in Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases at : http://www.givd.info/

The database helps you to retrieve suitable data sources.

It might be useful for you to have a look at sPlot which is a new initiative aimed at forming a database of plant plots across the globe. It includes the EVA data, as well as many other local initiatives but is of course not 100% complete (e.g. missing some plots in Sub-Saharan Africa).

https://www.idiv.de/en/sdiv/working_groups/wg_pool/splot/splot_database.html