Mapping harvest area of comprehensive crop types in China from 1990 to 2020 at a 1-km resolution

Changing crop patterns are the primary driver of global land use change and impact Earth’s hydrological and ecosystem processes. While existing studies have mapped the distribution of some individual food crops in China, harvest area maps for a complete set of crops over the past few decades are currently lacking. This study pioneered the development of a spatiotemporally continuous dataset of harvest area maps for 16 crop types in China from 1990 to 2020 at a 1-km resolution. Prefecture-level crop statistics were allocated to grids based on the crop suitability score, which is evaluated by multi-source natural and economic factors influencing crop cultivation. County-level validations demonstrated that the built dataset is highly consistent with statistical data, especially for primary grains and oilseed crops. Moreover, crop harvest area attribution at the sub-pixel level can better represent gradient changes within urban-rural transition zones. The built crop maps revealed that the harvest zones of maize, rice, and soybeans in Northern China have steadily expanded over the past three decades, with their cultivation centers shifting northeast by more than 200 kilometres. In comparison, wheat cultivation has become increasingly concentrated in Northern China. This dataset fully supports the identification of spatiotemporal changes in China’s crop patterns and can serve as a critical input to biogeochemical models and dynamic agricultural models such as LPJmL. The datasets can be obtained at https://www.scidb.cn/en/s/yeAfme.