China County Agricultural Land Use Statistics for 1990

NASA EarthData hosts a Land Use dataset from the China County Data Collection. It contains three variables describing agricultural land use for Chinese counties: cropland area, pastureland/grassland area, and area sown. The data was compiled by SCIOPS from multiple Chinese sources for the year 1990.

Use Cases

• Model carbon and nitrogen biogeochemistry using the DNDC model with county-level cropland, pastureland, and area sown inputs.
• Analyze regional agricultural intensity by comparing the area sown (counting double-cropped areas twice) to total cropland area.
• Assess county-level land allocation for food production versus grazing using the cropland and pastureland/grassland area columns.
• Establish a 1990 baseline for historical land use change studies by integrating this dataset with later agricultural surveys.

Strengths

• Provides three specific land use variables (cropland, pastureland, area sown) at the county administrative scale.
• Data is temporally focused on a single reference year (1990) for consistent cross-county comparison.

Limitations

• Dataset is from 1990 and is not updated, making it unsuitable for analyzing current land use trends.
• The sample size (number of counties) and total row count are unknown, limiting assessment of coverage.

Provenance

Source

SCIOPS, compiled from multiple Chinese sources.

Collection Method

Compiled as inputs for the University of New Hampshire (UNH) DNDC model.

Time Range

1990

Freshness

null

Geography

China, at the county scale.