A global open-source dataset of monthly irrigated and rainfed cropped areas (MIRCA-OS) for the 21st century
Crop production is among the most extensive human activities on the planet - with critical importance for global food security, land use, environmental burden, and climate. Yet despite the key role that croplands play in global land use and Earth systems, there remains little understanding of how spatial patterns of global crop cultivation have recently evolved and which crops have contributed most to these changes. Here we construct a new data library of subnational crop-specific irrigated and rainfed harvested area statistics and combine it with global gridded land cover products to develop a global gridded (5-arcminute) irrigated and rainfed cropped area (MIRCA-OS) dataset for the years 2000 to 2015 for 23 crop classes. These global data products support critical insights into the spatially detailed patterns of irrigated and rainfed cropland change since the start of the century and provide an improved foundation for a wide array of global assessments spanning agriculture, water resource management, land use change, climate impact, and sustainable development.
Authors
- Piyush Mehta (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2213-2410)
- Sarah Hartman
- Kate A. Brauman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8099-285X)
- Qinyu Deng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5560-2942)
- Stefan Siebert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9998-0672)
- Wei Xie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-8979-9286)
- Tariq Ali (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6083-6959)
- Kevin Ong’are Oluoch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1075-0860)
- Jonas Jägermeyr (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8368-0018)
- D. K. Ray (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2856-9608)
- Kyle Frankel Davis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4504-1407)
- Asfaw Kebede (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5212-7340)
Institutions
- Goddard Institute for Space Studies (US)
- Environmental Systems Research Institute (United States) (US)
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU)
- University of Minnesota (US)
- University of Alabama (US)
- Peking University (CN)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Leibniz Association (DE)
- Data61 (AU)
- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (DE)
- University of Göttingen (DE)
- Jiangxi Agricultural University (CN)
- Columbia University (US)
- University of Delaware (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Data
- Published
- 2025-02-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-04313-w
- Citations
- 17
- Primary Topic
- Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 13.89
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Agriculture
- Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft