Development and validation of the global map of irrigation areas

摘要

A new version of a digital global map of irrigation areas was developed bycombining irrigation statistics for 10 825 sub-national statistical unitsand geo-spatial information on the location and extent of irrigationschemes. The map shows the percentage of each 5 arc minute by 5 arc minutecell that was equipped for irrigation around the year 2000. It is thus animportant data set for global studies related to water and land use. Thispaper describes the data set and the mapping methodology and gives, for thefirst time, an estimate of the map quality at the scale of countries, worldregions and the globe. Two indicators of map quality were developed for thispurpose, and the map was compared to irrigated areas as derived from tworemote sensing based global land cover inventories.