Abstract. The challenge of global food security in the face of population growth, conflict and climate change requires a comprehensive understanding of cropped areas, irrigation practices and the distribution of major commodity crops like maize and wheat. However, such understanding should preferably be updated at seasonal intervals for each agricultural system rather than relying on a single annual assessment. Here we present the European Space Agency funded WorldCereal system, a global, seasonal, and reproducible crop and irrigation mapping system that addresses existing limitations in current global-scale crop and irrigation mapping. WorldCereal generates a range of global products, including temporary crop extent, seasonal maize and cereals maps, seasonal irrigation maps, seasonal active cropland maps, and confidence layers providing insights into expected product quality. The WorldCereal product suite for the year 2021 presented here serves as a global demonstration of the dynamic open-source WorldCereal system. The presented products are fully validated, e.g., global user's and producer's accuracies for the annual temporary crop product are 88.5 % and 92.1 %, respectively. The WorldCereal system provides a vital tool for policymakers, international organizations, and researchers to better understand global crop and irrigation patterns and inform decision-making related to food security and sustainable agriculture. Our findings highlight the need for continued community efforts such as additional reference data collection to support further development and push the boundaries for global agricultural mapping from space. The global products are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7875104 (Van Tricht et al., 2023).

中文翻译：

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WorldCereal：用于全球范围、季节性和可再生作物和灌溉绘图的动态开源系统

摘要。面对人口增长、冲突和气候变化，全球粮食安全面临挑战，需要全面了解种植面积、灌溉方式以及玉米和小麦等主要商品作物的分布。然而，这种理解最好在每个农业系统的季节性间隔内更新，而不是依赖于单一的年度评估。在这里，我们介绍了欧洲航天局资助的 WorldCereal 系统，这是一个全球性、季节性和可重复的作物和灌溉绘图系统，解决了当前全球范围内作物和灌溉绘图的现有局限性。WorldCereal 生成一系列全球产品，包括临时作物范围、季节性玉米和谷物地图、季节性灌溉地图、季节性活跃农田地图、和置信层，提供对预期产品质量的洞察。此处展示的 2021 年 WorldCereal 产品套件是动态开源 WorldCereal 系统的全球演示。所提供的产品经过充分验证，例如，全球用户和生产商对年度临时作物产品的准确度分别为 88.5% 和 92.1%。WorldCereal 系统为决策者、国际组织和研究人员提供了一个重要工具，以更好地了解全球作物和灌溉模式，并为与粮食安全和可持续农业相关的决策提供信息。我们的研究结果强调需要社区继续努力，例如收集额外的参考数据，以支持进一步发展并突破全球农业太空测绘的界限。