GLAD Global Cropland Extent (UMD GLAD)
20 years of global cropland change at 30m — where farmland grew, where it shrank, 2000–2020.
What this is
The GLAD lab at the University of Maryland maps global cropland extent and change annually from 2000 to 2020 at 30m. Accessible via bulk download, GEE, and Ag Data Commons. License CC-BY-4.0.
Why we surface it
Single-year cropland masks answer "is this field active now." GLAD's time series answers where agriculture expanded or contracted over two decades — the layer behind land-use change and deforestation attribution.
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
- USDA NASS Crop Sequence Boundaries (CSB)Public domain
- USDA NASS Cropland Data Layer (CDL)Public domain
- LGRIP30 — Landsat-Derived Global Rainfed and Irrigated-Cropland Product (NASA LP DAAC)CC0 (NASA LP DAAC — no copyright restriction; attribution encouraged)
- ESA WorldCereal 10m (ESA Consortium)CC-BY-4.0