Satellite and Census Land Use Grid for Amazonia: 1995

Amazonia's land use during the mid-1990s is mapped at a 5-minute (9x9 km) grid resolution. The dataset merges satellite imagery with agricultural census data to estimate the fractional area of cultivated land, natural pasture, and planted pasture across the Amazon and Tocantins river basins. This snapshot provides a spatially explicit baseline for analyzing land cover change and agricultural pressure in this critical region.

Use Cases

• Projecting historical land use forward or backward in time as a driver for ecosystem models.
• Validating finer-scale land use classifications by providing a regional, census-informed baseline.
• Analyzing the spatial distribution and fractional coverage of cultivated area (estimated at 1.7e7 ha) within grid cells.
• Mapping the extent and location of natural and planted pasture (each estimated at 3.3e7 ha) across the river basins.
• Studying the conversion pressure from tropical forest and cerrado to agricultural land uses in the mid-1990s.

Strengths

• Blends ground-based agricultural census data with satellite imagery for improved spatial explicitness.
• Provides quantitative estimates for three key land use types: cultivated area (2.5% of basin), natural pasture (4.9%), and planted pasture (4.9%).
• Offers a fine-scale 5-minute (9x9 km) grid resolution, a significant improvement over raw census data.

Limitations

• Conflicting last updated dates exist between sources (1995-01-01 and 2026-03-13), creating uncertainty about data currency or metadata maintenance.
• Specific column names and the exact row/record count are not provided by any source platform.
• Represents a single temporal snapshot (mid-1990s), limiting longitudinal analysis without complementary data.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Merged satellite imagery with agricultural censuses to create fractional land use grids.

Time Range

mid-1990s

Freshness

2026-03-13 01:03:08.288829

Geography

Amazon and Tocantins river drainage basins, South America.