Cropping intensity (CI) is essential for agricultural land use management, but fine-resolution global CI is not available. We used multiple satellite data on Google Earth Engine to develop a first 30 m resolution global CI (GCI30). GCI30 performed well, with an overall accuracy of 92 %. GCI30 not only exhibited high agreement with existing CI products but also provided many spatial details. GCI30 can facilitate research on sustained cropland intensification to improve food production.

Carbon emissions from land-use change are a large and uncertain component of the global carbon cycle. The Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) dataset was developed as an input to carbon and climate simulations and has been updated annually for the Global Carbon Budget (GCB) assessments. Here we discuss the methodology for producing these annual LUH2 updates and describe the 2019 version which used new cropland and grazing land data inputs for the globally important region of Brazil.

The ever-evolving landscapes in the African, Caribbean and Pacific regions should be monitored for land cover changes. The Global Land Monitoring Service of the Copernicus Programme, and in particular the Hot Spot Monitoring activity, developed a satellite-imagery-based workflow to monitor such areas. Here, we present a total of 852 025 km² of areas mapped with up to 32 land cover classes. Thematic land cover and land cover change maps, as well as validation datasets, are presented.

We reconstructed the annual, 5 km × 5 km resolution cropland percentage map that covers mainland China and spans from 1900 to 2016. Our results are advantageous, as they reconcile accuracy, temporal coverage, and spatial resolutions. We further examined the cropland shift pattern and its driving factors in China using the reconstructed maps. This work will greatly contribute to the field of global ecology and land surface modeling.

The cropland area of each administrative unit based on statistics in Scandinavia from 1690 to 1999 is allocated into 1 km grid cells. The cropland area increased from 1690 to 1950 and then decreasd in the following years, especially in southeastern Scandinavia. Comparing global datasets with this study, the spatial patterns show considerable differences. Our dataset is validated using satellite-based cropland cover data and results in previous studies.

Large-scale and high-resolution maps of rapeseed are important for ensuring global energy security. We generated a new database for the rapeseed planting area (2017–2019) at 10 m spatial resolution based on multiple data. Also, we analyzed the rapeseed rotation patterns in 25 representative areas from different countries. The derived rapeseed maps are useful for many purposes including crop growth monitoring and production and optimizing planting structure.

Over past decades, a lot of global land-cover products have been released; however, these still lack a global land-cover map with a fine classification system and spatial resolution simultaneously. In this study, a novel global 30 m landcover classification with a fine classification system for the year 2015 (GLC_FCS30-2015) was produced by combining time series of Landsat imagery and high-quality training data from the GSPECLib on the Google Earth Engine computing platform.

In this study, the first 30 m resolution terrace map of China was developed through supervised pixel-based classification using multisource, multi-temporal data based on the Google Earth Engine platform. The classification performed well with an overall accuracy of 94 %. The terrace mapping algorithm can be used to map large-scale terraces in other regions globally, and the terrace map will be valuable for studies on soil erosion, carbon cycle, and ecosystem service assessments.

We present a dataset of mid-19th-century building structure locations in former Galicia and Austrian Silesia (parts of the Habsburg Monarchy), located in present-day Czechia, Poland, and Ukraine. It consists of two kinds of building structures: residential and farm-related buildings. The dataset may serve as an important input in studying long-term socio-economic processes and human–environmental interactions or as a valuable reference for continental settlement reconstructions.

Decision-making for sustainable vegetable oil production requires accurate global oil crop maps. We used high-resolution satellite data to train a deep learning model that accurately classified industrial and smallholder oil palm, the main oil-producing crop. Our results outperformed previous studies and proved the suitability of deep learning for land use mapping. The global oil palm area was 21±0.42 Mha for 2019; however, young and sparse plantations were not included in this estimate.

Fine-grained geospatial data on the spatial distribution of human settlements are scarce prior to the era of remote-sensing-based Earth observation. In this paper, we present datasets derived from a large, novel building stock database, enabling the spatially explicit analysis of 200 years of land development in the United States at an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. These datasets greatly facilitate long-term studies of socio-environmental systems in the conterminous USA.

We propose a hierarchical principle for remotely sensed urban land use and land cover change for mapping intra-urban structure and component dynamics. China’s Land Use/cover Dataset (CLUD) is updated, delineating the imperviousness and green surface conditions in cities from 2000 to 2018. The newly developed datasets can be used to enhance our understanding of urbanization impacts on ecological and regional climatic conditions and on urban dwellers' environments.

SPAM makes plausible estimates of crop distribution within disaggregated units. It moves the data from coarser units such as countries and provinces to finer units such as grid cells and creates a global gridscape at the confluence between earth and agricultural-production systems. It improves spatial understanding of crop production systems and allows policymakers to better target agricultural- and rural-development policies for increasing food security with minimal environmental impacts.

For the first time, we produced a 30 m winter wheat distribution map in China for 3 years during 2016–2018. Validated with 33 776 survey samples, the map had perfect performance with an overall accuracy of 89.88 %. Moreover, the method can identify planting areas of winter wheat 3 months prior to harvest; that is valuable information for production predictions and is urgently necessary for policymakers to reduce economic loss and assess food security.

Larger ecological zones and wildlife corridors in sub-Saharan Africa require monitoring, as social and economic demands put high pressure on them. Copernicus’ Hot-Spot Monitoring service developed a satellite-imagery-based monitoring workflow to map such areas. Here, we present a total of 560 442 km² from which 153 665 km² is mapped with eight land cover classes while 406 776 km² is mapped with up to 32 classes. Besides presenting the thematic products, we also present our validation datasets.

We developed a global, high-resolution dataset and quantified recent rates of land transformation and current patterns of human modification for 2017, globally. Briefly, we found that increased human activities and land use modification have caused 1.6 × 10⁶ km² of natural land to be lost between 1990 and 2015 and the rate of loss has increased over that time. While troubling, we believe these findings are invaluable to underpinning global and national discussions of conservation priorities.

Global cropland distribution is critical for agricultural monitoring and food security. We propose a new Self-adapting Statistics Allocation Model (SASAM) to develop the global map of cropland distribution. SASAM is based on the fusion of multiple existing cropland maps and multilevel statistics of cropland area, which is independent of training samples. The synergy map has higher accuracy than the input datasets and better consistency with the cropland statistics.

The amount of impervious surface is an important indicator in the monitoring of the intensity of human activity and environmental change. In this study, a global 30 m impervious surface map was developed by using multisource, multitemporal remote sensing data based on the Google Earth Engine platform. The accuracy assessment indicated that the generated map had more optimal measurement accuracy compared with other state-of-art impervious surface products.

The first annual oil palm area dataset (AOPD) for Malaysia and Indonesia from 2001 to 2016 was produced by integrating multiple satellite datasets and a change-detection algorithm (BFAST). This dataset reveals that oil palm plantations have expanded from 5.69 to 19.05 M ha in the two countries during the past 16 years. The AOPD is useful in understanding the deforestation process in Southeast Asia and may serve as land-use change inputs in dynamic global vegetation models.

For the first time, we generated a 1 km gridded-phenology product for three staple crops in China during 2000–2015, called ChinaCropPhen1km. Compared with the phenological observations from the agricultural meteorological stations, the dataset had high accuracy, with errors of retrieved phenological date of less than 10 d. The well-validated dataset is sufficiently reliable for many applications, including improving the agricultural-system or earth-system modeling over a large area.