HISLAND-SA: Annual and 1-km crop-specific gridded data in South America from 1950 to 2020

We developed spatially explicit crop-specific maps (i.e., soybean, maize, wheat, and rice) at a 1 km × 1 km resolution and annual step in South America from 1950 to 2020 by integrating historical agricultural census data, model-based crop type data, and high-resolution remote sensing-based crop type data. Compared with existing data, our reconstructed data have higher spatial and temporal resolution which can better capture the dynamics of crop type changes during the historical period. This newly developed data can be used to assess the impacts of agricultural expansion on greenhouse gas emissions, ecosystem services, biodiversity loss, and to guide the formulation of land management and conservation policies for sustainable agricultural development and ecological conservation.