FAO GMIA / AQUASTAT irrigated areas (FAO)
The global map of where irrigation infrastructure exists — percentage of area equipped, at 10km.
What this is
FAO's Global Map of Irrigated Areas (GMIA) from AQUASTAT estimates the percentage of land area equipped for irrigation at 5-arcmin (~10km). Available for download from FAO and as WMS. License note: GMIA is CC-BY 4.0, but the FAO corporate license (which explicitly covers AQUASTAT in Annex 1 of its Statistical Database Terms) includes a restriction against using FAO data in a way that implies FAO endorsement of a product or service — i.e., do not use GMIA data in commercial promotional materials in a manner that suggests FAO backs your product. Attribution is required; commercial use is otherwise permitted. This is a narrower restriction than a full NC clause, but it is worth noting if the integration is commercial.
Why we surface it
Without a baseline for where irrigation infrastructure exists, satellite ET or groundwater signals lack context. GMIA provides that baseline, globally.
What you can do with it
Shown for commercial use. Personal, research, and nonprofit use is often more permissive — switch the verdict lens on the catalog.
- Internal / individual use
- Free to use for any purpose, including commercial and AI training. Nothing's triggered until you share it.
- Redistribute the data
- Fine to use and redistribute, including commercially. One string attached: credit the original source wherever it shows up.
- Republish a derivative
- Build on it and republish freely, commercial or not. You must credit the original source in what you ship.
- Build into a private product
- Fine to build into a closed or commercial product. Attribution is still owed wherever the data is actually exposed to users.
This decoder is a starting point, not legal advice. For commercial deployment, run the actual license terms past someone who reads them for a living.
○ Planned
Not in the map yet — this source is on the V1 backlog. Schema, sample, and citation slots fill in once the layer ships.
Related — same domain
- LANID — Landsat-based Irrigation Dataset for the United StatesCC-BY 4.0 for the 1997–2017 core (credit Xie & Lark, UW—Madison); the 2018–2020 extension is a US Geological Survey release in the public domain
- Center-pivot polygons from GMIE (UFFDA calls this set GCPIS)CC0 1.0 — no restriction on reuse
- OpenET monthly evapotranspiration (CONUS)OpenET Terms of Use — noncommercial/personal use only; commercial use prohibited without prior written permission
- FAO WaPOR v3 (FAO)CC-BY-SA 4.0 (v3; attribution + share-alike on redistribution; commercial use permitted)