Spatial distribution of arable and abandoned land across former Soviet Union Countries.

Abstract

We present a map of arable land (both utilized and abandoned) together with a validation data set for eight countries of the former Soviet Union (fSU), namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation and Ukraine. The map has a spatial resolution of 10 arc-seconds and represents the year 2010. The map is based on the integration of a number of existing maps and a training data set collected using visual interpretation of very high resolution (VHR) imagery. The map can be used for carbon modelling, assessment of land use, land use change and evaluation of agriculture potential. An additional validation data set was collected through visual interpretation of VHR imagery by trained experts, and can be used for validation of other maps from this region. The overall accuracies of the map by region and country, i.e. Caucasus, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation and Ukraine, are 90±2%, 84±2%, 92±1%, 78±3%, 95±1%, 83±2%, respectively.