WorldCereal: a dynamic open-source system for global-scale, seasonal, and reproducible crop and irrigation mapping

The challenge of global food security in the face of population growth, conflict and climate change requires a comprehensive understanding of cropped areas, irrigation practices and the distribution of major commodity crops like maize and wheat. However, such understanding should preferably be updated at seasonal intervals for each agricultural system rather than relying on a single annual assessment. Here we present the European Space Agency funded WorldCereal system, a global, seasonal, and reproducible crop and irrigation mapping system that addresses existing limitations in current global-scale crop and irrigation mapping. WorldCereal generates a range of global products, including temporary crop extent, seasonal maize and cereals maps, seasonal irrigation maps, seasonal active cropland maps, and confidence layers providing insights into expected product quality. The WorldCereal product suite for the year 2021 presented here serves as a global demonstration of the dynamic open-source WorldCereal system. The presented products are fully validated, e.g., global user's and producer's accuracies for the annual temporary crop product are 88.5 % and 92.1 %, respectively. The WorldCereal system provides a vital tool for policymakers, international organizations, and researchers to better understand global crop and irrigation patterns and inform decision-making related to food security and sustainable agriculture. Our findings highlight the need for continued community efforts such as additional reference data collection to support further development and push the boundaries for global agricultural mapping from space. The global products are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7875104 (Van Tricht et al., 2023)

Apport de la télédétection pour l’étude des systèmes de culture dans le cadre de la gestion de l’eau.

National audienc

Cartography of irrigated crops and estimation of biophysical variables with high temporal and spatial resolution images.

International audienc

Estimation of phonological indicators and irrigated areas of crops with high temporal and spatial resolution images, in the perspectives of the Sentinel 2 mission.

International audienc

ESA WorldCereal 10 m 2021 v100

The European Space Agency (ESA) WorldCereal 10m 2021 product suite consist of global-scale annual and seasonal crop maps and (where applicable) their related confidence. Every file in this repository contains up to 106 agro-ecological zone (AEZ) products which were all processed with respect to their own regional seasonality and should be considered as independent products