Mapping Paddy Rice Distribution and Cropping Intensity in South and Southeast Asia (1995 - 2024) at 30m Resolution

We provide spatial distribution and planting intensity datasets of rice in South and Southeast Asia for the years 1995, 2005, 2015, and 2024. The maps achieved overall accuracies ranging from 83% to 87%. When compared with the FAO official statistics for South and mainland Southeast Asian countries, the derived maps yielded R² values exceeding 0.9. Due to optical imagery data issues in northern India, we replaced the 2024 results with SAR+optic, with the method referring to our previous article on the improved phenology-based rice mapping algorithm (Zhao et al., 2024, "Improved phenology-based rice mapping algorithm by integrating optical and radar data," Remote Sensing of Environment, 315, 114460, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2024.114460). At the same time, we also provide the results that can be produced using optical data alone.