المعلومات الجغرافية المكانية للنظم الغذائية المستدامة

Cultivated cropland area extent in Sudan Estimates for July 2023 in comparison to July average during 2018-2022

Year published: 28/02/2024

A rapid geospatial assessment was carried out to estimate the extent of cultivated cropland throughout Sudan for July 2023, compared to last 5-year (2018-2022) average by integrating data from satellite remote sensing, existing 2020 land cover map and digitized irrigation schemes. Within the broader irrigation scheme boundaries, all agricultural land were classified as irrigated. Additionally, all the areas falling under individual land parcel-level irrigation boundaries in Al Jazirah state were also categorized as irrigated. All other agricultural areas from the 2020 national land cover map were classified as rainfed. A thresholding approach was followed to distinguish actively cultivated areas from the non-cultivated areas. The threshold for the dekadal WaPOR (remote sensing for water productivity) Net Primary Productivity (NPP) data was chosen through visual inspection, phenological observations, cross-referencing with cultivated area maps from previous years, and histogram analysis of the NPP values within the experiment test sites. Agricultural areas with NPP values equal to or exceeding the established threshold during any of the three dekad periods were classified as cultivated.