ESSDD Earth System Science Data Discussions ESSDD Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. 1866-3591 Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/essd-2023-130 CROPGRIDS: A global geo-referenced dataset of 173 crops circa 2020 Tang Fiona H. M. 1 Nguyen Thu Ha https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9464-6491 2 Conchedda Giulia 3 Casse Leon https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5781-8247 3 Tubiello Francesco N. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4617-4690 3 Maggi Federico https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7878-8112 2 4 School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Statistics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, Rome 00153, Italy Sydney Institute of Agriculture, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia 20 04 2023 2023 1 22 Copyright: © 2023 Fiona H. M. Tang et al. 2023 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2023-130/ The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2023-130/essd-2023-130.pdf

<p>Despite recent advancements in cloud processing and modelling and the increasing availability of high spectral- and temporal- resolution satellite imagery, mapping the spatial distribution of crop types remains a challenging task. Here, we present CROPGRIDS &ndash; a comprehensive global, geo-referenced dataset providing information on areas for 173 crops circa the year 2020, at a resolution of 0.05&deg; (~5.55 km at the equator). It represents a major update of the Monfreda et al. (2008) dataset, the most widely used geospatial dataset previously available, covering 175 crops with reference year 2000 at 10 km spatial resolution. CROPGRIDS updates Monfreda et al. (2008) through the careful evaluation of 26 published gridded datasets covering more recent crop information at regional, national, and global levels, largely over the period 2015&ndash;2020. The new product successfully updates the area extent for 80 of the 175 crops originally covered, representing an update to 1.2 billion hectares of crop area (i.e., 81 % of the total cropland included in CROPGRIDS). CROPGRIDS carries forward the crop type maps originally in Monfreda et al. (2008) for 93 crops as more recent information for these crops is not available. We compared CROPGRIDS harvested area of individual crops against independent national and subnational data from 36 National Statistical Offices (NSOs), national-level crop area data for more than 180 countries and territories from FAOSTAT, as well as geospatially, against a newly available high-resolution (30 m) cropland agreement map (Tubiello et al., 2023). Results indicated robustness against the available independent information, with CROPGRIDS world total harvested and crop areas around 1.5 billion hectares. To the best of our knowledge, CROPGRIDS represents the most comprehensive update of previous work on the subject area, offering a new benchmark of global gridded harvested and crop area data for the year circa 2020. CROPGRIDS dataset can be downloaded at <a href="https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22491997" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22491997</a> (Tang et al., 2023).</p>