Mapping the Global Distribution of Livestock

Livestock contributes directly to the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people and affects the diet and health of many more. With estimated standing populations of 1.43 billion cattle, 1.87 billion sheep and goats, 0.98 billion pigs, and 19.60 billion chickens, reliable and accessible information on the distribution and abundance of livestock is needed for a many reasons. These include analyses of the social and economic aspects of the livestock sector; the environmental impacts of livestock such as the production and management of waste, greenhouse gas emissions and livestock-related land-use change; and large-scale public health and epidemiological investigations. The Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW) database, produced in 2007, provided modelled livestock densities of the world, adjusted to match official (FAOSTAT) national estimates for the reference year 2005, at a spatial resolution of 3 minutes of arc (about 5×5 km at the equator). Recent methodological improvements have significantly enhanced these distributions: more up-to date and detailed sub-national livestock statistics have been collected; a new, higher resolution set of predictor variables is used; and the analytical procedure has been revised and extended to include a more systematic assessment of model accuracy and the representation of uncertainties associated with the predictions. This paper describes the current approach in detail and presents new global distribution maps at 1 km resolution for cattle, pigs and chickens, and a partial distribution map for ducks. These digital layers are made publically available via the Livestock Geo-Wiki (http://www.livestock.geo-wiki.org), as will be the maps of other livestock types as they are produced.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Global distribution of chickens and pigs raised in extensive, semi-intensive and intensive systems in 2010 (5 minutes of arc)

This dataset presents GIS layers of chicken and pigs global distribution in 2010, broken down in extensive and intensive systems (chickens) and extensive, semi-intensive and intensive systems (pigs). It uses the model published by Gilbert et al. (2015) applied to the new GLW 3 chicken and pigs data layers

Summary of the fitting metrics for each continental tile and species modelled.

<p>Summary of the fitting metrics for each continental tile and species modelled.</p

Distribution of chickens (birds per square kilometre) raised under extensive (a) and intensive (b) production systems (unprojected lat/long decimal degrees coordinate system, WGS 84).

<p>The data used to produce these maps were all from public sources (detailed in the <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0133381#sec002" target="_blank">Material and Method</a> section), and the country limit data are from the FAO Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) database.</p

Uganda, visual comparison of observed cattle data a) in GLW 2007 (level 1) and b) in GLW 2 (level 4), and the resulting predicted distribution c) for GLW 2007 and d) for GLW 2.

<p>Uganda, visual comparison of observed cattle data a) in GLW 2007 (level 1) and b) in GLW 2 (level 4), and the resulting predicted distribution c) for GLW 2007 and d) for GLW 2.</p

Summary of the predictor variables.

<p>*Middle Infra-Red;</p><p>**Land Surface Temperature;</p><p>***Normalized Difference Vegetation Index;</p><p>****Enhanced Vegetation Index;</p><p>****Country totals adjusted to UN values in 2006 (<a href="http://www.un.org/esa/population/" target="_blank">http://www.un.org/esa/population/</a>).</p

Extensively and intensively raised chickens in Thailand according to the current methodology (a and b, respectively) and that of Van Boeckel <i>et al</i>. [8] (c and d, respectively) (unprojected lat/long decimal degrees coordinate system, WGS 84).

<p>The data used to produce these maps were all from public sources (detailed in the <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0133381#sec002" target="_blank">Material and Method</a> section) and the country limit data are from the FAO Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) database.</p

Thailand, visual comparison of a) poultry distribution as mapped in GLW at 5 km; against b) chicken and c) duck distributions mapped separately in GLW 2 at 1 km spatial resolution.

<p>Thailand, visual comparison of a) poultry distribution as mapped in GLW at 5 km; against b) chicken and c) duck distributions mapped separately in GLW 2 at 1 km spatial resolution.</p

GLW 2 global distributions of a) cattle; b) pigs; c) chickens; and d) distribution of ducks, excluding South America and Africa.

<p>GLW 2 global distributions of a) cattle; b) pigs; c) chickens; and d) distribution of ducks, excluding South America and Africa.</p

Overall workflow of GLW modelling.

<p>Overall workflow of GLW modelling.</p