FROM-GC: 30 m global cropland extent derived through multisource data integration

Abstract

We report on a global cropland extent product at 30-m spatial resolution developed with two 30-m global land cover maps (i.e. FROM-GLC, Finer Resolution Observation and Monitoring, Global Land Cover; FROM-GLC-agg) and a 250-m cropland probability map. A common land cover validation sample database was used to determine optimal thresholds of cropland probability in different parts of the world to generate a cropland/noncropland mask according to the classification accuracies for cropland samples. A decision tree was then applied to combine two 250-m cropland masks: one existing mask from the literature and the other produced in this study, with the 30-m global land cover map FROM-GLC-agg. For the smallest difference with country-level cropland area in Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical (FAOSTAT) database, a final global cropland extent map was composited from the FROM-GLC, FROM-GLC-agg, and two masked cropland layers. From this map FROM-GC (Global Cropland), we estimated the global cropland areas to be 1533.83 million hectares (Mha) in 2010, which is 6.95 Mha (0.45%) less than the area reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations for the year 2010. A country-by-country comparison between the map and the FAOSTAT data showed a linear relationship (FROM-GC = 1.05*FAOSTAT −1.2 (Mha) with R2= 0.97). Africa, South America, Southeastern Asia, and Oceania are the regions with large discrepancies with the FAO survey.