Land use/land cover in Iraq and Syria, 2000-2016

The land-use/land-cover (LULC) dataset covers the area between 28.35-37.84°N and 35.29-49.14°E (Iraq and Syria), and shows annual cropland extent (single- and double cropping) as well as bare soil and other (non-cropland) vegetaton in the area, for the period 2000-2016.

The data are structured in the following folders:

Classification - yearly data on LULC. The values represent the class IDs:

0 - Bare Soil (Includes areas with little or no vegetation, including bare soil, fallow croplands, and artificial areas (e.g. urban or built up)

1 - Cropland (single) (Active croplands, harvested once per year (April/May), usually low intensity agriculture such as cereals.)

2 - Cropland (double) (Active cropland with multiple harvests, usually in April/May and September/October.)

3 - Other vegetation (All other natural vegetation cover, as well as orchards. The phenology does not show any sharp decline in greenness during harvest periods.)

Cropland_data

Showing extent of cropland (class 1 or 2) each year. 1 = cropland, 0 = not cropland.

Fallow_data_Syria

Fallow is defined based on the mode cropland extent for the period 2000-2016, and then compared with the current year. For example, if a pixel's mode value (aka most frequent class) is 1 or 2 and for a given year the value is 1 or 2 it will be classified as not fallow (0). If it's mode value is 1 or 2 and the value of a given year is 0 or 3, it is classified as fallow.

Values:

1 - Fallow

0 - Not fallow, actively cropped

Summary_maps

This folder includes two maps, one with the cropland frequency (i.e. number of years actively cropped) and one with the Mode LULC value for the 2000-2016 period (class ID as in the Classification data).

Update 2024-05-21: 

Added data and code used for Eklund et al 2024 (Environ. Res. Lett. 19 014077) in Eklund_et_al_2024Data_Code.7zip.