Percent Arable and Not Yet Cultivated by Terrestrial Ecoregion

Percent of ecoregion area that is arable and not yet converted.

We developed the map of arable land not yet converted to agriculture from data provided by Fischer et al. (2002). Our map was produced by modeling the moderate- to high-yielding climate-soil envelopes for nine major world crops and projecting those areas geographically in regions that are not classified as urban or agricultural by JRC (2003). It represented rain-fed agriculture only, so the area of arable land is likely underestimated. It also does not account for changing future demands for irrigated agriculture that are driven by national policy and finance.

These data were derived by The Nature Conservancy, and were displayed in a map published in The Atlas of Global Conservation (Hoekstra et al., University of California Press, 2010). More information at http://nature.org/atlas.

Data derived from:
Fischer, G., H. van Velthuizen, S. Medow, and F. Nachtergaele. 2002. Global Agro-ecological Assessment [CD]. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; and Laxenburg, Austria: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC). 2003. GLC 2000: Global Land Cover Mapping for the Year 2000. Ispra, Italy: European Commission Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability. Available at www-tem.jrc.it/glc2000. Digital media.