Annual Cropland Abandonment and Land Cover Maps for 11 Sites, 1987-2017

Christopher L. Crawford and Princeton University researchers created annual maps of cropland abandonment, land cover, and derived data products. The archive supports analysis of abandonment trajectories across 11 sites from 1987 to 2017. Data includes observed, potential, maximum, and recultivation categories for time-series analysis.

Use Cases

• Analyze the duration of cropland abandonment based on annual abandonment age maps.
• Model potential abandonment scenarios without recultivation using the '_potential' data products.
• Identify maximum abandonment periods over a time series using the '_max' labeled files.
• Study recultivation patterns following abandonment using the '_recult' period data.

Strengths

• Data covers a 30-year time series from 1987 to 2017.
• Includes analysis for 11 distinct geographic sites.
• Provides four derived data categories: observed, potential, maximum, and recultivation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Christopher L. Crawford, Princeton University

Collection Method

Derived from raw annual land cover maps and cropland abandonment maps, processed using R packages (data.table, raster, terra).

Time Range

1987-2017

Geography

11 sites, including Shaanxi Province, China