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Description

The NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Global Food Security-support Analysis Data (GFSAD) data product provides cropland extent data over the continent of Africa for nominal year 2015 at 30 meter resolution (GFSAD30AFCE). The monitoring of global cropland extent is critical for policymaking and provides important baseline data that are used in many agricultural cropland studies pertaining to water sustainability and food security. The GFSAD30AFCE data product uses two pixel-based supervised classifiers, Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM), and one object-oriented classifier, Recursive Hierarchical Image Segmentation (RHSEG). The classifiers retrieve cropland extent from a combination of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) data and elevation derived from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Version 3 data products. Each GFSAD30AFCE GeoTIFF file contains a cropland extent layer that defines areas of cropland, non-cropland, and water bodies over a 10° by 10° area.

Known Issues

  • Known issues, including constraints and limitations, are provided on page 20 of the ATBD.

Version Description

Version 1 of GFSAD Crop-Extent 30 m Africa product

Product Summary

Platforms
LANDSAT-8,
Sentinel-2A,
DEM,
LANDSAT-5
Instruments
OLI,
Sentinel-2 MSI,
TM
Spatial Extent
N: 40.10861 S: -50.108476 E: 70.001218 W: -37
Spatial Resolution
30 Meters x 30 Meters
Geographic Region
AFRICA
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
CARTESIAN
Temporal Extent
2013-01-01 to 2016-06-30
Temporal Resolution
4 Year
Data Partner
Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC)
Western Geographic Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI/USGS/WGSC)
Concept ID
C2763261633-LPCLOUD
Data State
COMPLETE
Processing Level
3
Published
Updated
Science Keywords
Crop/Plant Yields,
Land Use Classes,
Landscape Patterns,
Cropland

Citation

Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.

Copy Citation

Xiong, J., Thenkabail, P., Tilton, J., Gumma, M., Teluguntla, P., Congalton, R., Yadav, K., Dungan, J., Oliphant, A., Poehnelt, J., Smith, C., & Massey, R. (2017). NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Global Food Security-support Analysis Data (GFSAD) Cropland Extent 2015 Africa 30 m V001 [Data set]. NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/MEASURES/GFSAD/GFSAD30AFCE.001 Date Accessed: 2025-11-02

File Naming Convention

GFSAD30AFCE_2015_S50E30_001_2017290131500.tif

File name begins with Product Short Name (GFSAD30AFC) followed by the Year of Acquisition (2015), the latitude and longitude of the lower left corner of the tile (S50E30), Version (001), Julian Date and Time of Processing as YYYYDDDHHMMSS (2017290131500), and the Data Format (tif).

Documents

Publications Citing This Dataset

Variables

Variables are a set of physical properties whose values determine the characteristics or behavior of something. For example, temperature and pressure are variables of the atmosphere. Parameters and variables can be used interchangeably. Variable level attributes provide individual information for each variable.

The Name in this table is the variable name. Fill value indicates missing or undefined data points in a variable. Valid range is the range of values the variable can store. Scale factor is used to increase or decrease the size of an object and can be used to correct for distortion. For questions on a specific variable, please use the Earthdata Forum.

Name Description Units Data Type Fill Value Valid Range Scale Factor
Band 1 Cropland Extent for Africa defined with three classes N/A uint8 N/A N/A to 2 N/A
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