Historical Amazon Land Use: Cropland and Pasture Fractions 1940-1995

Annual spatial patterns of cropland, natural pasture, and planted pasture land uses across Amazonia from 1940/1950 to 1995. The dataset provides fractional land cover within 5-minute grid cells, derived from two distinct 1995 base maps that fused satellite imagery with agricultural census data. A historical reconstruction algorithm was applied to generate the annual time series.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term trends in agricultural expansion using annual cropland and pasture fractions.
• Comparing land-use change patterns between the Brazilian Amazon basin (AMZ-C file) and the broader Legal Amazon region (AMZ-R file).
• Calibrating or validating ecological models of deforestation and pasture development with historical grid-cell data.
• Studying the spatial distribution and intensity of different pasture types (natural vs. planted) over a 45-55 year period.

Strengths

• Provides a continuous annual time series covering a 45 to 55-year period (1940/1950-1995).
• Integrates multiple data sources, including AVHRR, MODIS, VEGETATION-SPOT satellite imagery and agricultural census data for the 1995 base classification.
• Offers two distinct spatial reconstructions (AMZ-C and AMZ-R) for comparative analysis, covering different extents of the Amazon.

Limitations

• Core metadata conflicts: one source lists a last update date of 1995-12-31, while others indicate 2026-03-13, suggesting possible re-publication versus original data date ambiguity.
• Specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not provided by any source, limiting precise technical assessment.
• The license is specified as 'other-license-specified' without detailed terms.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD, based on land use classifications from Cardille et al. (2002) and Ramankutty et al. (2008).

Collection Method

Generated by applying a historical land-use reconstruction algorithm to 1995 base maps, which were created from the fusion of remote sensing (AVHRR, MODIS, VEGETATION-SPOT) and agricultural census data.

Time Range

1940/1950-1995

Freshness

2026-03-13 01:12:59.447011

Geography

Amazonia; specifically the Brazilian portion of the Amazon and Tocantins basins (AMZ-C) and the entire Legal Amazon region with adjacent areas (AMZ-R).