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Full catalog/GFSAD30NACE
GFSAD30NACE·v001·dataset

Where croplands are in North America (2010, 30m)

Global Food Security-support Analysis Data (GFSAD) Cropland Extent 2010 North America product 30 m V001
land NASA LPCLOUD Level 3 GeoTIFF
In plain English

What it measures. A map showing where croplands were across North America around the year 2010, marking each 30-meter patch as cropland, non-cropland, or water.

How it's made. Produced by running automated classifiers over a mix of Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 imagery plus elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to pick out farmland.

How & where you'd use it. Provides baseline data for agriculture, water-sustainability, and food-security studies that need to know where crops are grown.

What's measured

AGRICULTURE › AGRICULTURAL PLANT SCIENCE › CROP/PLANT YIELDSLAND SURFACE › LAND USE/LAND COVER › LAND USE CLASSESLAND SURFACE › LANDSCAPE › LANDSCAPE PATTERNSBIOSPHERE › ECOSYSTEMS › ANTHROPOGENIC/HUMAN INFLUENCED ECOSYSTEMS › AGRICULTURAL LANDS › CROPLAND

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2008-01-01 → 2015-12-31
  • Measured byLANDSAT-7 (ETM+) · DEM · LANDSAT-5 (TM)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -0.001078, 1.928773, 90
  • FormatsGeoTIFF
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments ([MEaSUREs](https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/competitive-programs/measures)) Global Food Security-support Analysis Data (GFSAD) data product provides cropland extent data over North America for nominal year 2010 at 30 meter resolution (GFSAD30NACE). The monitoring of global cropland extent is critical for policymaking and provides important baseline data that are used in many agricultural cropland studies pertaining to water sustainability and food security. The GFSAD30NACE data product uses a combination of the pixel-based supervised classifier, Random Forest (RF), and the object-oriented classifier, Recursive Hierarchical Image Segmentation (RHSEG). The classifiers retrieve cropland extent from a combination of Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data and elevation derived from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Version 3 data products. Each GFSAD30NACE GeoTIFF file contains a cropland extent layer that defines areas of cropland, non-cropland, and water bodies over a 10° by 10° area. Known Issues * Known issues, including constraints and limitations, are provided on page 39 of the ATBD.

Get the data

gfsad30nace_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="GFSAD30NACE",
    version="001",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from LPCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.