Evaluation of global land cover maps for cropland area estimation in the conterminous United States

Global land cover data could provide continuously updated cropland acreage and distribution information, which is essential to a wide range of applications over large geographical regions. Cropland area estimates were evaluated in the conterminous USA from four recent global land cover products: MODIS land cover (MODISLC) at 500-m resolution in 2010, GlobCover at 300-m resolution in 2009, FROM-GLC and FROM-GLC-agg at 30-m resolution based on Landsat imagery circa 2010 against the US Department of Agriculture survey data. Ratio estimators derived from the 30-m resolution Cropland Data Layer were applied to MODIS and GlobCover land cover products, which greatly improved the estimation accuracy of MODISLC by enhancing the correlation and decreasing mean deviation (MDev) and RMSE, but were less effective on GlobCover product. We found that, in the USA, the CDL adjusted MODISLC was more suitable for applications that concern about the aggregated county cropland acreage, while FROM-GLC-agg gave the least deviation from the survey at the state level. Correlation between land cover map estimates and survey estimates is significant, but stronger at the state level than at the county level. In regions where most mismatches happen at the county level, MODIS tends to underestimate, whereas MERIS and Landsat images incline to overestimate. Those uncertainties should be taken into consideration in relevant applications. Excluding interannual and seasonal effects, R² of the FROM-GLC regression model increased from 0.1 to 0.4, and the slope is much closer to one. Our analysis shows that images acquired in growing season are most suitable for Landsat-based cropland mapping in the conterminous USA.     

大尺度土地覆盖数据集在中国及周边区域的精度评价

大尺度土地覆盖数据是全球陆地表层过程研究、生态系统评估、环境建模等科学研究的重要基础,研究现有数据集的特点对数据使用者及生产新的数据集都具有指导意义。本研究以中国及周边区域为研究区,根据不同分类体系对地物的定义,研究不同分类体系中对应地物的相关系数,并将所有分类体系转换为IGBP分类体系;然后,从定性和定量两方面分析现有5种土地覆盖数据集(IGBP DISCover、UMD、GLC2000、MOD12Q1和GlobCover 2005)的空间一致性;并利用Google Earth高分影像选取两期验证样本评价5种土地覆盖数据集的精度。结果表明:同种地物在不同土地覆盖数据集之间的空间分布格局差异较大,且不同土地覆盖数据集之间的总体一致性系数较低;5种土地覆盖数据集中,GLC2000的总体精度和Kappa系数均最高,GlobCover 2005的总体精度和Kappa系数均最低。     

Assessing factors impacting the spatial discrepancy of remote sensing based cropland products: A case study in Africa

Many African countries are facing increasing risks of food insecurity due to rising populations. Accurate and timely information on the spatial distribution of cropland is critical for the effective management of crop production and yield forecast. Most recent cropland products (2015 and 2016) derived from multi-source remote sensing data are available for public use. However, discrepancies exist among these cropland products, and the level of discrepancy is particularly high in several Africa regions. The overall goal of this study was to identify and assess the driving factors contributing to the spatial discrepancies among four cropland products derived from remotely sensed data. A novel approach was proposed to evaluate the spatial agreement of these cropland products and assess the impact of environmental factors such as elevation dispersion, field size, land-cover richness and frequency of cloud cover on these spatial differences. Results from this study show that the overall accuracies of the four cropland products are below 65%. In particular, large disagreements are seen on datasets covering Sahel zone and along the West African coasts. This study has identified land-cover richness as the driving factor with the largest contribution to the spatial disagreement among cropland products over Africa, followed by the high frequency of cloud cover, small and fragmented field size, and elevation complexity. To improve the accuracy of future cropland products for African regions, the data producers are encouraged to take a multi-classification approach and incorporate multi-sensors into their cropland mapping processes.     

Assessing the suitability of GlobeLand30 for mapping land cover in Germany

Global land cover (LC) maps have been widely employed as the base layer for a number of applications including climate change, food security, water quality, biodiversity, change detection, and environmental planning. Due to the importance of LC, there is a pressing need to increase the temporal and spatial resolution of global LC maps. A recent advance in this direction has been the GlobeLand30 dataset derived from Landsat imagery, which has been developed by the National Geomatics Center of China (NGCC). Although overall accuracy is greater than 80%, the NGCC would like help in assessing the accuracy of the product in different regions of the world. To assist in this process, this study compares the GlobeLand30 product with existing public and online datasets, that is, CORINE, Urban Atlas (UA), OpenStreetMap, and ATKIS for Germany in order to assess overall and per class agreement. The results of the analysis reveal high agreement of up to 92% between these datasets and GlobeLand30 but that large disagreements for certain classes are evident, in particular wetlands. However, overall, GlobeLand30 is shown to be a useful product for characterizing LC in Germany, and paves the way for further regional and national validation efforts.     

Measuring land-use and land-cover change using the U.S. department of agriculture’s cropland data layer: Cautions and recommendations

Monitoring agricultural land is important for understanding and managing food production, environmental conservation efforts, and climate change. The United States Department of Agriculture's Cropland Data Layer (CDL), an annual satellite imagery-derived land cover map, has been increasingly used for this application since complete coverage of the conterminous United States became available in 2008. However, the CDL is designed and produced with the intent of mapping annual land cover rather than tracking changes over time, and as a result certain precautions are needed in multi-year change analyses to minimize error and misapplication. We highlight scenarios that require special considerations, suggest solutions to key challenges, and propose a set of recommended good practices and general guidelines for CDL-based land change estimation. We also characterize a problematic issue of crop area underestimation bias within the CDL that needs to be accounted for and corrected when calculating changes to crop and cropland areas. When used appropriately and in conjunction with related information, the CDL is a valuable and effective tool for detecting diverse trends in agriculture. By explicitly discussing the methods and techniques for post-classification measurement of land-cover and land-use change using the CDL, we aim to further stimulate the discourse and continued development of suitable methodologies. Recommendations generated here are intended specifically for the CDL but may be broadly applicable to additional remotely-sensed land cover datasets including the National Land Cover Database (NLCD), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based land cover products, and other regional, national, and global land cover classification maps.     

Global rain-fed,irrigated, and paddy croplands: A new high resolution map derived from remote sensing,crop inventories and climate data

Irrigation accounts for 70% of global water use by humans and 33–40% of global food production comes from irrigated croplands. Accurate and timely information related to global irrigation is therefore needed to manage increasingly scarce water resources and to improve food security in the face of yield gaps, climate change and extreme events such as droughts, floods, and heat waves. Unfortunately, this information is not available for many regions of the world. This study aims to improve characterization of global rain-fed, irrigated and paddy croplands by integrating information from national and sub-national surveys, remote sensing, and gridded climate data sets. To achieve this goal, we used supervised classification of remote sensing, climate, and agricultural inventory data to generate a global map of irrigated, rain-fed, and paddy croplands. We estimate that 314 million hectares (Mha) worldwide were irrigated circa 2005. This includes 66 Mha of irrigated paddy cropland and 249 Mha of irrigated non-paddy cropland. Additionally, we estimate that 1047 Mha of cropland are managed under rain-fed conditions, including 63 Mha of rain-fed paddy cropland and 985 Mha of rain-fed non-paddy cropland. More generally, our results show that global mapping of irrigated, rain-fed, and paddy croplands is possible by combining information from multiple data sources. However, regions with rapidly changing irrigation or complex mixtures of irrigated and non-irrigated crops present significant challenges and require more and better data to support high quality mapping of irrigation.     

Differences between cropland and rangeland MODIS phenology (start-of-season) in Mali

Start-of-season data are more and more used to qualify the land surface phenology trends in relation with climate variability and, more rarely, with human land management. In this paper, we compared the phenology of rangeland vs cropped land in the Sahel belt of Africa, using the only currently available global phenology product (MODIS MCD12Q2 – Land Cover Dynamics Yearly), and an enhanced crop mask of Mali. The differences in terms of start-of-season (SOS) are spatially (north south gradient), and temporally (10 years, 2001–2009) analyzed in bioclimatic terms. Our results show that globally the MODIS MCD12Q2 SOS dates of croplands and rangelands differ, and that these differences depend on the bioclimatic zone. In Sahelian and Guinean regions, cropland vegetation begins to grow earlier than rangeland vegetation (8-day and 4-day advance, respectively). Between, in the Sudanian and Sudano-Sahelian parts of Mali, rangeland vegetation greens about one week earlier than croplands. These results are discussed in the context of the land surface heterogeneity at MODIS scale, and in the context of the natural vegetation ecology. These results could help interpreting phenological trends in climate change analysis.     

Comparison of upscaling cropland and non-cropland map using uncertainty weighted majority rule-based and the majority rule-based aggregation methods

Aggregation method is seriously impacted by the landscape characteristics, which has been emphasized due to proportional errors. This research proposed an uncertainty weighted majority rule-based aggregation method (UWMRB) to upscale the cropland/non-cropland map. The Cropland Data Layer for 2016 at 30m resolution, with its corresponding confidence level data, were collected to conduct the experiment using UWMRB and majority rule-based aggregation method. Proportional errors of crop/non-crop were used to assess the accuracy of the two methods. Ordinal logistic regression was used to obtain the probability of an error occurring to predict the uncertainty of both methods. The results show that UWMRB can achieve the lower proportional errors with lower uncertainty. Also, it can reduce the influence of complexity and fragmentation of landscape on aggregation performance. Additionally, the examination of UWMRB provides an important view of application of uncertainty information for upscaling land cover maps in an efficient way.     

Global, 30-m resolution continuous fields of tree cover: Landsat-based rescaling of MODIS vegetation continuous fields with lidar-based estimates of error

Abstract

We developed a global, 30-m resolution dataset of percent tree cover by rescaling the 250-m MOderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) Tree Cover layer using circa- 2000 and 2005 Landsat images, incorporating the MODIS Cropland Layer to improve accuracy in agricultural areas. Resulting Landsat-based estimates maintained consistency with the MODIS VCF in both epochs (RMSE =8.6% in 2000 and 11.9% in 2005), but showed improved accuracy in agricultural areas and increased discrimination of small forest patches. Against lidar measurements, the Landsat-based estimates exhibited accuracy slightly less than that of the MODIS VCF (RMSE=16.8% for MODIS-based vs. 17.4% for Landsat-based estimates), but RMSE of Landsat estimates was 3.3 percentage points lower than that of the MODIS data in an agricultural region. The Landsat data retained the saturation artifact of the MODIS VCF at greater than or equal to 80% tree cover but showed greater potential for removal of errors through calibration to lidar, with post-calibration RMSE of 9.4% compared to 13.5% in MODIS estimates. Provided for free download at the Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF) website (www.landcover.org), the 30-m resolution GLCF tree cover dataset is the highest-resolution multi-temporal depiction of Earth's tree cover available to the Earth science community.     

Integrating global land cover products for improved forest cover characterization: an application in North America

Six widely used coarse-resolution global land cover data-sets – Global Land Cover Characterization (GLCC), Global Land Cover 2000 (GLC2000), GlobCover land cover product (GlobCover), MODIS land cover product (MODIS LC), the University of Maryland land cover product (UMD LC), and the MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields tree cover layer (MODIS VCF) disagree substantially in their estimates of forest cover. Employing a regression tree model trained on higher-resolution, Landsat-based data, these multisource multiresolution maps were integrated for an improved characterization of forest cover over North America. Evaluated using a withheld test sample, the integrated percent forest cover (IPFC) data-set has a root mean square error of 11.75% – substantially better than the 17.37% of GLCC, 17.61% of GLC2000, 17.96% of GlobCover, 15.23% of MODIS LC, 19.25% of MODIS VCF, and 15.15% of UMD LC, respectively. Although demonstrated for forest, this approach based on integration of multiple products has potential for improved characterization of other land cover types as well.     

Spectral matching techniques (SMTs) and automated cropland classification algorithms (ACCAs) for mapping croplands of Australia using MODIS 250-m time-series (2000–2015) data

ABSTRACT

Mapping croplands, including fallow areas, are an important measure to determine the quantity of food that is produced, where they are produced, and when they are produced (e.g. seasonality). Furthermore, croplands are known as water guzzlers by consuming anywhere between 70% and 90% of all human water use globally. Given these facts and the increase in global population to nearly 10 billion by the year 2050, the need for routine, rapid, and automated cropland mapping year-after-year and/or season-after-season is of great importance. The overarching goal of this study was to generate standard and routine cropland products, year-after-year, over very large areas through the use of two novel methods: (a) quantitative spectral matching techniques (QSMTs) applied at continental level and (b) rule-based Automated Cropland Classification Algorithm (ACCA) with the ability to hind-cast, now-cast, and future-cast. Australia was chosen for the study given its extensive croplands, rich history of agriculture, and yet nonexistent routine yearly generated cropland products using multi-temporal remote sensing. This research produced three distinct cropland products using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250-m normalized difference vegetation index 16-day composite time-series data for 16 years: 2000 through 2015. The products consisted of: (1) cropland extent/areas versus cropland fallow areas, (2) irrigated versus rainfed croplands, and (3) cropping intensities: single, double, and continuous cropping. An accurate reference cropland product (RCP) for the year 2014 (RCP2014) produced using QSMT was used as a knowledge base to train and develop the ACCA algorithm that was then applied to the MODIS time-series data for the years 2000–2015. A comparison between the ACCA-derived cropland products (ACPs) for the year 2014 (ACP2014) versus RCP2014 provided an overall agreement of 89.4% (kappa?=?0.814) with six classes: (a) producer’s accuracies varying between 72% and 90% and (b) user’s accuracies varying between 79% and 90%. ACPs for the individual years 2000–2013 and 2015 (ACP2000–ACP2013, ACP2015) showed very strong similarities with several other studies. The extent and vigor of the Australian croplands versus cropland fallows were accurately captured by the ACCA algorithm for the years 2000–2015, thus highlighting the value of the study in food security analysis. The ACCA algorithm and the cropland products are released through http://croplands.org/app/map and http://geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/croplands/algorithms/australia_250m.html     

Estimating crop net primary production using national inventory data and MODIS-derived parameters

National estimates of spatially-resolved cropland net primary production (NPP) are needed for diagnostic and prognostic modeling of carbon sources, sinks, and net carbon flux between land and atmosphere. Cropland NPP estimates that correspond with existing cropland cover maps are needed to drive biogeochemical models at the local scale as well as national and continental scales. Existing satellite-based NPP products tend to underestimate NPP on croplands. An Agricultural Inventory-based Light Use Efficiency (AgI-LUE) framework was developed to estimate individual crop biophysical parameters for use in estimating crop-specific NPP over large multi-state regions. The method is documented here and evaluated for corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) in Iowa and Illinois in 2006 and 2007. The method includes a crop-specific Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), shortwave radiation data estimated using the Mountain Climate Simulator (MTCLIM) algorithm, and crop-specific LUE per county. The combined aforementioned variables were used to generate spatially-resolved, crop-specific NPP that corresponds to the Cropland Data Layer (CDL) land cover product. Results from the modeling framework captured the spatial NPP gradient across croplands of Iowa and Illinois, and also represented the difference in NPP between years 2006 and 2007. Average corn and soybean NPP from AgI-LUE was 917 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ and 409 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹, respectively. This was 2.4 and 1.1 times higher, respectively, for corn and soybean compared to the MOD17A3 NPP product. Site comparisons with flux tower data show AgI-LUE NPP in close agreement with tower-derived NPP, lower than inventory-based NPP, and higher than MOD17A3 NPP. The combination of new inputs and improved datasets enabled the development of spatially explicit and reliable NPP estimates for individual crops over large regional extents.     

Agricultural cropland mapping using black-and-white aerial photography,Object-Based Image Analysis and Random Forests

Land-use and land-cover (LULC) conversions have an important impact on land degradation, erosion and water availability. Information on historical land cover (change) is crucial for studying and modelling land- and ecosystem degradation. During the past decades major LULC conversions occurred in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America as a consequence of a growing population and economy. Most distinct is the conversion of natural vegetation into cropland. Historical LULC information can be derived from satellite imagery, but these only date back until approximately 1972. Before the emergence of satellite imagery, landscapes were monitored by black-and-white (B&W) aerial photography. This photography is often visually interpreted, which is a very time-consuming approach. This study presents an innovative, semi-automated method to map cropland acreage from B&W photography. Cropland acreage was mapped on two study sites in Ethiopia and in The Netherlands. For this purpose we used Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) and a Random Forest classification on a set of variables comprising texture, shape, slope, neighbour and spectral information. Overall mapping accuracies attained are 90% and 96% for the two study areas respectively. This mapping method increases the timeline at which historical cropland expansion can be mapped purely from brightness information in B&W photography up to the 1930s, which is beneficial for regions where historical land-use statistics are mostly absent.     

Investigating Rice Cropping Practices and Growing Areas from MODIS Data Using Empirical Mode Decomposition and Support Vector Machines

This study investigated rice cropping practices and rice growing areas in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta using MODIS 250 × 250 m normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data acquired during the 2002 and 2007 rice cropping seasons. Data processing was conducted in five main steps: (1) constructing time-series MODIS NDVI data; (2) noise filtering of the time-series MODIS NDVI data using empirical mode decomposition (EMD); (3) extracting and evaluating phenological rice training patterns from the smooth time profiles of NDVI; (4) classifying rice cropping systems using support vector machines (SVMs); and (5) conducting an error analysis using ground reference data and government rice statistics. The results indicated that EMD was an efficient filter for noise removal in the time-series MODIS NDVI data. The filtered temporal NDVI profile characterized the distinct behaviors of the rice cropping systems. The estimated sowing and harvesting dates were compared with the field-survey data and indicated root mean square error (RMSE) values of 7.5 and 8.2 days, respectively. The comparison results between the 2002 classification map and the ground reference data indicated that the overall accuracy for the 2002 data was 92.9% with a Kappa coefficient of 0.89, while in 2007 these values were 93.8% and 0.90, respectively. At the district level, there was good agreement between the MODIS-based estimated areas and government rice statistics for 2002 and 2007 (R ² ≥ 0.85). An investigation of changes in cropping practices from 2002 to 2007 showed that 12.9% of the area used for double-cropped irrigated rice in 2002 had been converted to triple-cropped irrigated rice by 2007, whereas 27.4% of the area used for triple-cropped irrigated rice in 2002 had been converted to double-cropped irrigated rice by 2007.     

基于3S技术的城市辐射效应景观分析——以蓬莱市为例

本文在3S技术的支持下采用缓冲区分析,从景观和斑块两个层次对蓬莱市城市辐射效应与景观结构关系进行了研究。结果表明:在景观层次上,随着城市辐射距离的增加,景观破碎化降低。在斑块层次上,蓬莱市的城市辐射效应对果园和水浇地的影响较大,最大距离是25km;对其他斑块类型影响不大。这表明山东半岛城市化进程加剧了景观的破碎化,而且这一过程主要是通过影响果园和水浇地斑块来实现的。     

Mapping cropland fallow areas in myanmar to scale up sustainable intensification of pulse crops in the farming system

Cropland fallows are the next best-bet for intensification and extensification, leading to increased food production and adding to the nutritional basket. The agronomical suitability of these lands can decide the extent of usage of these lands. Myanmar’s agricultural land (over 13.8 Mha) has the potential to expand by another 50% into additional fallow areas. These areas may be used to grow short-duration pulses, which are economically important and nutritionally rich, and constitute the diets of millions of people as well as provide an important source of livestock feed throughout Asia. Intensifying rice fallows will not only improve the productivity of the land but also increase the income of the smallholder farmers. The enhanced cultivation of pulses will help improve nutritional security in Myanmar and also help conserve natural resources and reduce environmental degradation. The objectives of this study was to use remote sensing methods to identify croplands in Myanmar and cropland fallow areas in two important agro-ecological regions, delta and coastal region and the dry zone. The study used moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250-m, 16-day normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) maximum value composite (MVC), and land surface water index (LSWI) for one 1 year (1 June 2012–31 May 2013) along with seasonal field-plot level information and spectral matching techniques to derive croplands versus cropland fallows for each of the three seasons: the monsoon period between June and October; winter period between November and February; and summer period between March and May. The study showed that Myanmar had total net cropland area (TNCA) of 13.8 Mha. Cropland fallows during the monsoon season account for a meagre 2.4% of TNCA. However, in the winter season, 56.5% of TNCA (or 7.8 Mha) were classified as cropland fallows and during the summer season, 82.7% of TNCA (11.4 Mha) were cropland fallows. The producer’s accuracy of the cropland fallow class varied between 92 and 98% (errors of omission of 2 to 8%) and user’s accuracy varied between 82 and 92% (errors of commission of 8 to 18%) for winter and summer, respectively. Overall, the study estimated 19.2 Mha cropland fallows from the two major seasons (winter and summer). Out of this, 10.08 Mha has sufficient moisture (either from rainfall or stored soil water content) to grow short-season pulse crops. This potential with an estimated income of US$ 300 per hectare, if exploited sustainably, is estimated to bring an additional net income of about US$ 1.5 billion to Myanmar per year if at least half (5.04 Mha) of the total cropland fallows (10.08 Mha) is covered with short season pulses.     

Comparison and relative quality assessment of the GLC2000, GLOBCOVER,MODIS and ECOCLIMAP land cover data sets at the African continental scale

Land cover dynamics at the African continental scale is of great importance for global change studies. Actually, four satellite-derived land cover maps of Africa now available, e.g. ECOCLIMAP, GLC2000, MODIS and GLOBCOVER, are based on images acquired in the 2000s. This study aims at stressing the compliances and the discrepancies between these four land cover classifications systems. Each of them used different mapping initiatives and relies on different mapping standards, which supports the present investigation. In order to do a relative comparison of the four maps, a preamble was to reconcile their thematic legends into more aggregated categories after a projection into the same spatial resolution. Results show that the agreement between the four land cover products is between 56 and 69%. While all these land cover datasets show a reasonable agreement in terms of surface types and spatial distribution patterns, mapping of heterogeneous landscapes in the four products is not very successful. Land cover products based on remote sensing imagery can indeed significantly be improved by using smarter algorithms, better timing of image acquisition, improved class definitions. Either will help to improve the accuracy of future land cover maps at the African continental scale. Data producers may use the areas of spatial agreement for training area selection while users might need to verify the information in the areas of disagreement using additional data sources.     

A global map of rainfed cropland areas (GMRCA) at the end of last millennium using remote sensing

The overarching goal of this study was to produce a global map of rainfed cropland areas (GMRCA) and calculate country-by-country rainfed area statistics using remote sensing data. A suite of spatial datasets, methods and protocols for mapping GMRCA were described. These consist of: (a) data fusion and composition of multi-resolution time-series mega-file data-cube (MFDC), (b) image segmentation based on precipitation, temperature, and elevation zones, (c) spectral correlation similarity (SCS), (d) protocols for class identification and labeling through uses of SCS R²-values, bi-spectral plots, space-time spiral curves (ST-SCs), rich source of field-plot data, and zoom-in-views of Google Earth (GE), and (e) techniques for resolving mixed classes by decision tree algorithms, and spatial modeling. The outcome was a 9-class GMRCA from which country-by-country rainfed area statistics were computed for the end of the last millennium. The global rainfed cropland area estimate from the GMRCA 9-class map was 1.13 billion hectares (Bha). The total global cropland areas (rainfed plus irrigated) was 1.53 Bha which was close to national statistics compiled by FAOSTAT (1.51 Bha). The accuracies and errors of GMRCA were assessed using field-plot and Google Earth data points. The accuracy varied between 92 and 98% with kappa value of about 0.76, errors of omission of 2–8%, and the errors of commission of 19–36%.     

An object-based image analysis approach to assess irrigation-water consumption from MODIS products in Ethiopia

Efficient water-resource management is essential with regard to food security, growing populations and climate change. This is especially important for low- and middle-income (LMC) countries where food is often locally produced by traditional smallholder farming. Detailed knowledge of the spatio-temporal distribution of irrigation-water consumption provides valuable information to anticipate local food shortages and water scarcity as a result of climate variability. Yet, adequate techniques to quantify irrigation-water consumption at field level over large areas are lacking. Irrigation estimates generally have a coarse resolution making them inadequate for field-level assessments.This study developed a remote-sensing-based approach to quantify spatio-temporal patterns of irrigation-water consumption at field level using the MODIS evapotranspiration product (MOD16A2) and existing land-use maps on the spatio-temporal distribution of irrigated agriculture. Object-based image analysis was used to establish local evapotranspiration differences between irrigated and rainfed fields on a monthly basis, which are the irrigation-water consumption rates of the irrigated fields. This novel method was applied to a study area in the Central Rift Valley in Ethiopia where smallholder farming is dominant and only a few large-scale farms are present. Comparison with irrigation-water-consumption values of a local irrigation scheme showed that the monthly temporal dynamics were captured quite well, but lower values were calculated compared to the scheme's field data. Comparison with two validated remote-sensing based studies in Africa showed good agreement as irrigation-water-consumption estimates were in the same order of magnitude. Irrigation-water consumption follows the temporal rainfall pattern, i.e. irrigation practices intensify with increased water availability. Surface water is commonly used for irrigation in the study area.Our study shows that smallholder practices have a lower irrigation-water consumption compared to modern large-scale farms by approximately a factor 3. Irrigation-water consumption in the area is considerable, especially during the dry season. On average 32 % of excess water (precipitation – evapotranspiration) is consumed for irrigation. For smallholder irrigation and large-scale irrigation specifically this is 28 % and 63 % respectively.The object-based approach presented here is an operational mapping method for field-level irrigation-water-consumption over large areas. MOD16A2 is a global open-source readily-available evapotranspiration product used here although an evapotranspiration product with a higher spatial resolution might be preferred. Our approach can provide irrigation-water-consumption estimates over large areas in data-poor regions, which will increase the understanding of spatio-temporal patterns of smallholder irrigation and provide information to optimize water use.     

Deriving Marine-Boundary-Layer Lapse Rate from Collocated CALIPSO, MODIS, and AMSR-E Data to Study Global Low-Cloud Height Statistics

Global cloud-top height statistics of marine-boundary-layer clouds are derived from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Level 2 aerosol and cloud layer products. The boundary-layer lapse rate in the northeast region of the Pacific Ocean is investigated using sea surface temperature (SST) data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E), cloud-top temperature data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and cloud-top height data from CALIPSO. Based on the lapse rate derived from the combined CALIPSO/MODIS/AMSR-E measurements, cloud-top heights in regions within CALIPSO tracks are derived from AMSR SST and MODIS cloud temperature to test the validity of this approach. For homogeneous low-level clouds, the results agree with the cloud-top height from the collocated CALIPSO cloud-top height measurements. These results suggest that the database of derived lapse rates from the combined measurements can be applied to study cloud-top height climate statistics using the MODIS and AMSR data when CALIPSO observations are not available.