CEH Land Cover Plus: Crops 2015

CEH and Remote Sensing Applications Consultants Ltd (RSAC) are collaborating on a project called Land Cover plus: Crops which exploits Copernicus Sentinel-1 C-band SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and Sentinel-2 optical data to produce annual crop maps for the whole of the United Kingdom.

Crops 2015, the first ever detailed crop map of the whole of the UK, is the first product from the collaboration. Mapping is carried out within the framework of the CEH Land Cover Map (LCM), with arable/horticultural and improved grassland parcels being coded with 2015 crop type information.

The crop classes in 2015 are winter wheat, winter barley, spring barley, oilseed rape, field beans, potatoes, sugar beet, maize, other (vegetable crops, oats, rye, peas and early potatoes and maize) and improved grass.

A time series of Sentinel-1 data have been used to produce the 2015 map, with more than 350 individual images of the UK being processed covering the whole crop growing season. From 2016 onwards crop mapping will also incorporate the use of Sentinel-2 optical data.

Specifications

Crops 2015 directly uses the LCM parcel framework, apart from where parcels have been identified containing large areas of two or more crops, when preliminary processing has been applied to subdivide parcels into these 2015 cropping units.

There is a minimum mapping size of 2 ha. to avoid problematic classification of small parcels. Practically all arable crops are grown in fields much larger than this, with much of the 10% arable land <2ha being horticultural.

Picture right: Crop class details shown in legend.

Mapping accuracy

Crops 2015 uses a modified version of the LCM parcel framework based on 2007 Ordnance Survey Mastermap® data. Recent field boundary changes are relatively uncommon and the effect on overall mapping accuracy is quite limited.

Indicative mapping accuracies for the different classes are:

Oilseed Rape (97%, or 97 fields out of every 100 correctly mapped)
Winter Wheat/Winter Barley/Spring Barley (95%, or 19 fields out of every 20 correctly mapped)
Field Beans/Sugar Beet/Potatoes/Maize/Other (85-90%, or 8-9 fields out of every 10 correctly mapped)
Improved Grass (95%, or 19 fields out of every 20 correctly mapped).

Additional information will be provided before product launch.

Applications

Key applications for Land Cover plus Crops are:

Hydrological Modelling
Catchment Sensitive Farming
Plant Health and Crop Science
Crop Areas and Statistics
Control of Crop Subsidies and Levies
Agri Business

Land Cover plus Crops was developed in conjunction with Anglian Water. Water companies require detailed agricultural land cover data for improved catchment modelling in the context of drinking water quality. Anglian Water’s assessment of LC+ products concluded that they have the potential to allow more accurate modelling of pesticide sources and transport pathways within catchments. LC plus"has the potential to enhance the current Drinking Water Safety Planning approach for diffuse agricultural sources of contamination in terms of hazard identification, risk assessment and risk management".

Detail from Crops 2015 (note: white areas are non-agricultural)

Annual mapping of agricultural cropping over the whole country has a wide range of potential applications, including the medium and long term detailed analysis of crop rotations and changing cropping patterns. Up-to-date crop maps are a vital resource for stakeholders who have an obligation to safeguard our environment. Agriculture impacts directly on biogeochemical and water cycles, nutrient balances and hydrological and biological systems. Through better understanding of crop distribution, crop rotations and their downstream consequences, changes in practice might be devised and implemented to bring about reduced pollution, wildlife conservation and improved control over the spread of crop diseases. Knowledge of crop distribution will also provide policy makers and regulatory agencies with better evidence to inform planning and decision making in areas as diverse as rural development, biofuels and food security.

Land Cover plus Crops is an important new source of information for Agri-business, providing advisors and suppliers with intelligence on the precise location of crops grown and in coming years with field-based information on crop rotations.

Product details

Crops 2015 is vector data, where each polygon represents a field or cropping parcel and is attributed with the crop class. A map of the unclassified small parcels is also included.

Scale: Minimum mapping unit is 2ha.
Supply Format: ESRI® Shapefile format
Coverage: UK

As well as complete country coverage, customised products for specific areas and/or crop types are also available.

Obtaining a licence for CEH Land Cover plus: Crops

Crops 2015 will be available for licencing from March 2016. Future annual maps will be available in October each year (ie Crops 2016 in October 2016).

Request a one-year licence to use CEH Land Cover plus: Crops by contacting the CEH Data Licensing team. The licence will be renewable.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Land Cover plus: Crops cost?

The price depends on your type of use (non-commercial or commercial) and on area of coverage, for example, commercial use of data covering an average county will cost approximately £3,500 + VAT per year and data covering all of England will cost approximately £33,000 + VAT per year.