MIRCA2000 data download

The information made available for download below was compiled as part of the MIRCA2000 data set. User of the data are kindly requested to read the documentation of the complete data set and/or the documentation of the irrigated data set and to send us an e-mail indicating your name, the intended use of the data and the institute you are working for. This will help us to inform you when additional data become available for download or when updates of the data were carried out. Please cite the data set as:

Portmann, F. T., Siebert, S. & Döll, P. (2010): MIRCA2000 – Global monthly irrigated and rainfed crop areas around the year 2000: A new high-resolution data set for agricultural and hydrological modeling, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 24, GB 1011, doi:10.1029/2008GB003435.


History / Recent additions:

  • Version 1.1 bugfixes: The Cropping Periods List at 5 arc-minute resolution had incorrect values for longitudes (increased by 1/12 or 0.083333) while column numbers were correct. This error has been fixed now (18/03/2010).

 

  • Version 1.1 complete: The rainfed data are now also available for download, in addition to the irrigated data, together with more products (02/09/2009). Documentation is available as a research paper in Global Biogeochemical Cycles (doi:10.1029/2008GB003435) (13/03/2010).

 

  • Version 1.1: This version was generated by implementing a bugfix to ensure consistency of two main input data sets indicating cropland extent (Ramankutty et al., 2008) and harvested crop area (Monfreda et al., 2008). In a number of grid cells located mainly along coast lines or inland water bodies there was harvested crop area but NODATA-values in the cropland extent data set. To fix this inconsistency it was decided to remove the NODATA-values in the cropland extent grid and to create new cropland extent by using the reported harvested crop areas and the average cropping intensity in the related sub-national unit. In total about 9400 grid cells and 11 Mha of harvested crop area were affected in the two input data sets. The number of grid cells affected in MIRCA2000 is however much larger because of the methodology used to assign crop area to specific grid cells. (29/05/2008)

 

  • Initial version of the data set:  Monthly growing areas and related cell specific crop calendars for irrigated crops are available for download. (14/03/2008)

Data available for download:

  • Monthly Growing Area Grids (MGAG) for 26 irrigated and rainfed crops, or the total of irrigated and rainfed crops: These are binary data (4-byte floating point values). The spatial resolution of the grids is 5 arc-minutes by 5 arc-minutes. For each of the 26 irrigated and 26 rainfed crop classes there exists one file containing for each of the 4320 x 2160 grid cells 12 values indicating the monthly growing areas in hectares. The cell order is from North to South and West to East. Value number 15 would therefore represent the growing area of the second cell located in the first row in March. Total necessary disk space for each decompressed file is 4320 x 2160 x 12 x 4 = 447,897,600 Byte (compressed to 0.5 - 7 MB each). For download convenience, summary ZIP-files for all 5-arc minute data (irrigated 28 MB and rainfed 79 MB) are available. An extension of September 2013 provides the monthly totals (sums) of irrigated and rainfed crops together, as one binary file (24 MB GZ-compressed), and as 12 monthly ESRI ArcGIS / ArcView / ArcINFO(R) ASCII-grids (format description see below; joined ZIP-file with 78 MB). monthly_growing_area_grids.zip and monthly_growing_area_grids_additional.zip from download page on zenodo
    For the conversion of MGAG monthly binary files to ESRI ASCII-grids there is a 32-bit software tool freely available since September 2013. conversion_flt2asc.zip from download page on zenodo

 

  • Cell specific list of growing periods (Cropping Periods List, CPL): Here we provide text files indicating for each grid cell, each irrigated crop and each related sub-crop the growing area in hectares and additionally the month in which the growing period starts and the month in which the growing period ends. The data are available for all 5 arc-minute by 5 arc-minute grid cells. Additionally we provide a aggregated version for cells of 30 arc-minute by 30 arc-minute extend. The two versions are completely consistent. However, while the number of sub-crops is limited to max. 5 in the 5 arc-minute version there can be up to 9 sub-crops in the 30 arc-minute version. This is because 30 arc-minute grid cells may contain smaller 5 arc-minute cells belonging to different spatial entities characterized by different crop calendars. Grid cells that do not contain any irrigated area are not listed in these files. The file size of the decompressed files is about 1,052 MB for the 5 arc-minute version (compressed 162 MB) and about 41 MB in case of the 30 arc-minute version (compressed 9 MB). growing_periods_listed.zip from download page on zenodo

 

  • Condensed Crop Calendars (CCC) for 26 irrigated and rainfed crops: These are ASCII text files, that provide for each of the 402 spatial units (or entities), for each crop and sub-crop, growing area, start and end month of the cropping periods. Crops are listed separately for irrigated and rainfed crops (file size < 250 KB). condensed_cropping_calendars.zip from download page on zenodo

 

  • Calendar units (spatial units): There the 402 used spatial units (or entities) are presented as a ASCII list with codes and names (about 10 KB), and a ASCII-grid of unit codes with 5 arc-minute resolution (about 300 KB). unit_code_grid.zip from download page on zenodo

 

The following grids are provided as ESRI ArcGIS / ArcView / ArcINFO(R) ASCII-grids that can be easily imported in most GIS software that support rasters or grids. The files have a header of 6 rows. The cell order in the data section is from North to South and West to East. The spatial resolution of the original grids is 5 arc-minutes by 5 arc-minutes. Also aggregated grids in 30 arc-minute resolution are available. The file size of each decompressed file is about 84 MB for the 5 arc-minute resolution (compressed 0.5 - 6 MB) and about 0.7 MB for the 30 arc-minute resolution (compressed 0.1 MB). For download convenience, also summary ZIP-files are provided, if necessary. Please consult the respective readme-files.

 

  • Annual harvested area grids for 26 irrigated and rainfed crops:  Besides for grids for each crops (irrigated and rainfed), also sums for all irrigated crops (AHI), rainfed crops (AHR), and irrigated and rainfed crops alltogether (total AHI+AHR) are provided. harvested_area_grids.zip from download page on zenodo

 

  • Maximum Monthly Growing Area Grids (MMGAG) for 26 irrigated and rainfed crops: For download convenience, summary ZIP-files for all 5-arc minute data (94 MB) and 30 arc-minute data (3 MB) are available. maximum_monthly_growing_area_grids.zip from download page on zenodo

 

  • Maximum Monthly Cropped Area Grids (MMCAG) for either all irrigated, all rainfed crops, or the total of irrigated and rainfed crops: Maximum monthly area within the year of all irrigated, all rainfed crops, or (since September 2013) the total (sum) of both all irrigated and all rainfed crops. Please note, that the sum of both is not the overall maximum monthly area, as the month of the maximum can be different in either case. maximum_cropped_area_grid.zip from download page on zenodo

 

  • Cell area grid: To compute the absolute harvested or growing areas as a percentage of grid cell area, the area of each grid cell is needed. cell_area_grid.zip from download page on zenodo

 

Please notice also the readme-files located inside the download folders and the explanations given in the FAQ-section!