The USGS is working on a project entitled "Global Food Security-Support Analysis Data at 30 m (GFSAD30)". This project is led by renowned geospatial research scientist Dr. Prasad S Thenkabail. According to USGS 'The GFSAD30 is a NASA funded project to provide high resolution global cropland data and their water use that contributes towards global food security in the twenty-first century. The GFSAD30 products are derived through multi-sensor remote sensing data (e.g., Landsat, MODIS, AVHRR), secondary data, and field-plot data and aims at documenting cropland dynamics from 1990 to 2017.'
Thereby, the overarching goal of GFSAD30 project is to produce consistent and unbiased estimates of global agricultural cropland products such as:
1) Cropland extent\area; 2) Crop types with focus on 8 crops that occupy 70% of the global cropland areas; 3) Irrigated versus rainfed; 4) Cropping intensities: single, double, triple, and continuous cropping; 5) Cropland change over space and time: 1990-2017. (source: USGS)
The GFSAD30 project has generated a quite precise, valuable for future research, downloadable for reuse and interactive global outputs.
Few screenshots and maps are depicted below-
There are many other useful maps. This to note that GFSAD 1km cropland is already in public domain for use can be used on Google Earth Engine. This will be quite interesting to see that when we get 30m cropland data in the Google Earth Engine. Though 30m cropland data has been made public and can be downloaded from here.
The global 30m croplands GFSAD30 Final Mosaic is here-
Global 30m croplands hybrid on Google satellite image-
Several good research papers have been published under this project that are made available in publication section. One of the most recent research paper is available through this direct link.
All the research output has been made public through croplands portal.
A very informative presentation in this regard has also been made public and can be seen here.
