Croplands in West Africa

A new regional data set of the spatial distribution of croplands for West Africa was created by synthesizing subnational cropland area statistics, a spatial map of population density, and a high-resolution satellite-derived cropland intensity data set for the Sahel (FEWS CUI). The new data set is an improvement over the existing data sets of cropland distribution and can be used within numerical ecosystem or climate models, as well as for spatial analysis of land cover/use change, land degradation, soil nutrient balance, food security, etc. Croplands in sub-Saharan Africa have rapidly expanded over the last 50 years, according to FAO, to meet the food demands of the growing population. Spatially explicit data sets of land use and land cover, like this one, are being widely used to examine the environmental consequences of cropland change. For more details, see Ramankutty, N. 2004. Croplands in West Africa: A Geographically-explicit Data Set For Use in Models. Earth Interactions, 8, 1-22.