The 10-m cotton maps in Xinjiang, China during 2018–2021

• Published in: Scientific data Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 688
• Main Authors: Kang, Xiaoyan, Huang, Changping, Chen, Jing M., Lv, Xin, Wang, Jin, Zhong, Tao, Wang, Huihan, Fan, Xianglong, Ma, Yiru, Yi, Xiang, Zhang, Ze, Zhang, Lifu, Tong, Qingxi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 10.10.2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 704/158/2456; 704/158/852; Classification; Cotton; Data Descriptor; Humanities and Social Sciences; Mapping; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); China
• ISSN: 2052-4463; 2052-4463
• DOI: 10.1038/s41597-023-02584-3

Cotton maps (10 m) of Xinjiang (XJ_COTTON10), which is the largest cotton production region of China, were produced from 2018 to 2021 through supervised classification. A two-step mapping strategy, i.e., cropland mapping followed by cotton extraction, was employed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of cotton mapping for a large region of about 1.66 million km 2 with high heterogeneity. Additionally, the time-series satellite data related to spectral, textural, structural, and phenological features were combined and used in a supervised random forest classifier. The cotton/non-cotton classification model achieved overall accuracies of about 95% and 90% on the test samples of the same and adjacent years, respectively. The proposed two-step cotton mapping strategy proved promising and effective in producing multi-year and consistent cotton maps. XJ_COTTON10 agreed well with the statistical areas of cotton at the county level (R 2  = 0.84–0.94). This is the first cotton mapping for the entire Xinjiang at 10-meter resolution, which can provide a basis for high-precision cotton monitoring and policymaking in China.