Hydrionis Data

Forest, Cropland and Grassland Cover Dataset

National land cover from FAO: forest area split into naturally regenerating, planted and primary forest, with cropland, arable land, permanent pasture and inland waters. Forest is observed at Global Forest Resources Assessment reference years — 1990, 2000, 2010, 2015, 2020 and 2025 — and the agricultural categories annually from 1961 for the countries that report them without imputation. Land cover is the slow variable underneath the rest of Hydrionis’ hydrology: what grows on a catchment governs how much rain reaches the ground, how much returns to the air, and how fast the rest runs off.

v1.0.016,336 observations1961–2025

16,336

Observations

1,278

Series

202

Subjects

1961–2025

Period covered

What this looks like

One real series from the dataset, and real rows from the head of its published extract. Neither is a mock-up: the rows below are the same rows, unchanged, that are in the file you would download.

Cropland area at Austria

The longest single series this dataset holds — 64 annual values, one of 1,278. The dataset is not this chart.

Drawn to show the shape and resolution of what the dataset contains, not to make a point about Austria. Gaps are breaks, never interpolated.

View the data behind this chart

Underlying data
Period	Austria (ha)
1961	1,754,000
1962	1,746,000
1963	1,721,000
1964	1,724,000
1965	1,728,000
1966	1,686,000
1967	1,670,000
1968	1,672,000
1969	1,680,000
1970	1,681,000
1971	1,681,000
1972	1,682,000
1973	1,612,000
1974	1,612,000
1975	1,609,000
1976	1,618,000
1977	1,627,000
1978	1,645,000
1979	1,622,000
1980	1,635,000
1981	1,648,000
1982	1,634,000
1983	1,516,000
1984	1,522,000
1985	1,525,000
1986	1,513,000
1987	1,513,000
1988	1,532,000
1989	1,533,000
1990	1,505,000
1991	1,524,000
1992	1,506,000
1993	1,498,000
1994	1,499,000
1995	1,492,000
1996	1,486,000
1997	1,479,000
1998	1,476,000
1999	1,473,000
2000	1,470,000
2001	1,458,000
2002	1,456,000
2003	1,451,030
2004	1,445,300
2005	1,446,700
2006	1,445,200
2007	1,444,000
2008	1,435,300
2009	1,432,900
2010	1,429,100
2011	1,424,900
2012	1,420,400
2013	1,419,300
2014	1,417,100
2015	1,411,590
2016	1,411,360
2017	1,395,810
2018	1,394,020
2019	1,392,400
2020	1,392,685
2021	1,390,449
2022	1,387,468
2023	1,387,283
2024	1,384,646

Sample rows

12 of 144,556 rows Taken from the start of observations-agriculture-fao-faostat.csv. These are sample rows, not the dataset.

Sample rows from the Forest, Cropland and Grassland Cover Dataset extract
`metric_id`	`subject_id`	`subject_kind`	`value`	`censored`	`censor_operator`	`censor_threshold`	`censor_limit`	`censor_reported`	`unit`	`period_start`	`period_end`	`period_kind`	`basis`	`confidence`	`source_id`	`source_ref`	`qualifier`	`superseded`	`retrieved`
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7800000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1964-01-01	1964-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7800000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1965-01-01	1965-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7835000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1966-01-01	1966-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7844000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1967-01-01	1967-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7844000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1968-01-01	1968-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7910000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1976-01-01	1976-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7910000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1977-01-01	1977-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7910000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1978-01-01	1978-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7910000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1979-01-01	1979-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7910000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1980-01-01	1980-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7910000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1981-01-01	1981-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27
arable-land-area	country-afg	geography	7910000	—	—	—	—	—	ha	1982-01-01	1982-12-31	year	reported	high	fao-faostat	Inputs_LandUse_E_All_Data_(Normalized).csv	—	—	2026-08-27

Download these rows as CSV — the same twelve, with the column header, for testing a loader before committing to the full file.

Methodology

Collected from the FAOSTAT land-use bulk domain, through the same fold as the crop and irrigation series. Every value carries a flag saying where it came from: official figures and figures from external organisations are stored as reported, FAO’s own estimates as estimated, and values imputed by a receiving agency are not stored at all. That rule is what produces the shape of the forest series — FAOSTAT publishes a forest figure for every year from 1990, but only the assessment years are observed and the rest are interpolated, so six points survive out of thirty-six and the gaps between them are left as gaps. Published in thousands of hectares and stored in hectares. Countries resolve through the UN M49-to-ISO3 crosswalk rather than by name; FAO’s own regional and world aggregates are excluded, including Sub-Saharan Africa, which carries an area code below the threshold the other aggregates sit above.

What this dataset cannot tell you

Read before relying on these figures

These are land-use classes, not measurements of vegetation. Land felled, burned or temporarily unstocked but expected to regenerate is still counted as forest at its full area, so the forest series does not register a fire or a clear-cut — only a change of use. Readers looking for wildfire in a forest-area series are reading the wrong instrument.
Reported national statistics compiled from forest inventories and agricultural censuses, not remote sensing. Hydrionis holds no satellite vegetation series: the open products are gridded imagery requiring a spatial aggregation Hydrionis cannot validate, and the tabular ones sit behind registration gates.
The forest series has six observations across thirty-five years. No change in it can be dated more precisely than the interval it falls in, and a loss in 2003 is indistinguishable from one in 2009.
The four forest categories are nested, not independent: naturally regenerating and planted sum to forest area, and primary forest sits inside naturally regenerating. Adding them together counts most of the world’s forest twice.
Cropland, arable land and pasture are reported without imputation by roughly 85 of 234 countries, against about 228 for forest. The reporting countries are those with working agricultural statistics, which is a systematic bias rather than a random sample.
Permanent meadows and pastures is the least consistently defined category. Countries with large arid rangelands have revised it by tens of millions of hectares without the land changing.
Primary forest depends on a judgement about visible human disturbance that varies between countries and between assessments by the same country, so a step change may record a reassessment rather than a clearance.
Inland waters is reported without imputation by 77 of 234 countries, so a country missing from it is the usual case. It is not wetland extent — seasonally inundated ground, peat, marsh and floodplain are not counted, and a country can lose most of its wetlands with this figure unmoved — and it is not a volume.
No wetland extent series is held. SDG indicator 6.6.1 covers wetlands, mangroves and lake and river water area nationally and annually for about two hundred countries, and is refused on rights: the UN SDG data portal designates terms granting personal, non-commercial use only, with no right to redistribute or to create derivative works. The JRC Global Surface Water product behind its lake and river extents is licensed cleanly but published only as GeoTIFF tiles. The Ramsar list measures designated area, which is a policy act rather than a measurement of wetland.
FAO revises history. The whole series is republished each release, so figures cited previously may change.

Coverage

Subjects	Countries, as held by Hydrionis; FAO aggregates and unresolvable areas excluded — 202 held
Period	1961–2025
Units	ha
Update cadence	Annually
Identifier	`land-cover` v1.0.0

Fields

Data dictionary →

Every metric this dataset carries, with the unit it is stored in and the geography level it is reported at. Full definitions are in the data dictionary.

Identifier	Field	Unit	Reported at
`forest-area`	Forest area Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees taller than 5 metres and a canopy cover above 10 per cent, or trees able to reach those thresholds in situ, where the predominant land use is not agricultural or urban.	ha	country
`forest-area-naturally-regenerating`	Naturally regenerating forest area Forest predominantly composed of trees established through natural regeneration, including primary forest.	ha	country
`forest-area-planted`	Planted forest area Forest predominantly composed of trees established through planting or deliberate seeding.	ha	country
`forest-area-primary`	Primary forest area Naturally regenerated forest of native species where there are no clearly visible indications of human activity and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed.	ha	country
`cropland-area`	Cropland area Land under temporary and permanent crops, including temporary meadows, market gardens and land temporarily fallow.	ha	country
`arable-land-area`	Arable land area Land under temporary crops, temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, market and kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow.	ha	country
`pasture-area`	Permanent meadows and pastures area Land used permanently, for five years or more, to grow herbaceous forage crops, whether cultivated or growing wild.	ha	country
`inland-waters-area`	Inland waters area Area of inland water bodies — lakes, reservoirs and rivers — within a country’s boundaries.	ha	country

Rights and access

Licence position

Restricted — see below. Derivative use true; redistribution true; commercial reuse unclear.

FAO adds terms beyond CC BY 4.0. Datasets may not be used for or in conjunction with the promotion of a commercial enterprise or its products or services, nor in any way suggesting FAO endorsement; commercial reuse is therefore recorded as unclear and withheld. FAO also warns that its databases may contain third-party data that may not be redistributable, with any such condition stated in the dataset metadata — the crop production and land use datasets Hydrionis holds carry no such note. Attribution must follow FAO’s prescribed citation format.

Permitted uses

Public display
Derived analysis
API delivery
Bulk download

Available to: Public, Developer, Research. These follow from the rights of the contributing publishers, not from a Hydrionis pricing decision — no access tier can widen what a publisher withheld.

Contributing sources

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations — FAOSTAT — Production and Land Use domains (CC BY 4.0, as complemented by the FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use)

Attribution and citation

Cite and reuse →

Two different obligations, deliberately kept apart. One is a condition of somebody else's licence; the other is a request Hydrionis has no standing to enforce.

Attribution you are required to give

These are conditions of the licences the underlying data is published under. They are obligations to the publishers, not to Hydrionis, and they apply to you directly whether or not you mention Hydrionis at all.

Data from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, used under CC BY 4.0, as complemented by the FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations — CC BY 4.0, as complemented by the FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use (licence text)

Suggested citation for Hydrionis

Hydrionis (2026), Forest, Cropland and Grassland Cover Dataset, version 1.0.0, accessed 2026-09-02, hydrionis.com/data/datasets/land-cover/

Cite Hydrionis where you rely on the compilation, the normalisation, the eligibility judgements or a chart. Where you use an unmodified published value, the publisher’s attribution is the one that is required; crediting Hydrionis as well is welcome and is not something Hydrionis can require of you.

Recommended, not required. Hydrionis does not claim rights over unmodified public data it relayed, and doing arithmetic on somebody else’s measurements does not make them Hydrionis’s. Cite the version and the access date: Forest, Cropland and Grassland Cover Dataset changes as publishers release and as methods are revised, and a citation without both cannot be checked later. Full guidance is on cite and reuse.

Changelog

Version 1.0.0 — 2026-08-27

First release.

Additions

Four forest categories at six assessment years from 1990, three agricultural land-cover categories from 1961, and inland waters area.

Use this data

Download agriculture observations from FAO (144,556 rows) (CSV)
Download ecosystem observations from FAO (5,222 rows) (CSV)
Machine-readable JSON /api/v1/datasets/land-cover.json
How to cite this, and who you must credit
How these figures were produced
Request this at a different scale, format or geography

Every bulk extract ships with a companion metadata file carrying this dataset’s version, its sources, their licences, the attribution you are required to give and the suggested citation — so the terms travel with the file rather than staying on this page.

About this data

The fields a professional user needs to judge whether this is fit for a particular purpose. Deliberately not a score.

About this data

Everything below is a property of the data rather than a rating of it. There is deliberately no single confidence score: how much a gap matters depends on what you are about to do with the series, and only you know that.

Source	Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations — FAOSTAT — Production and Land Use domains · CC BY 4.0, as complemented by the FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use
How the values came to exist	Mixed across the series — the basis is recorded on every individual value.
Period held	1961–2025
Known gaps	These are land-use classes, not measurements of vegetation. Land felled, burned or temporarily unstocked but expected to regenerate is still counted as forest at its full area, so the forest series does not register a fire or a clear-cut — only a change of use. Readers looking for wildfire in a forest-area series are reading the wrong instrument. Reported national statistics compiled from forest inventories and agricultural censuses, not remote sensing. Hydrionis holds no satellite vegetation series: the open products are gridded imagery requiring a spatial aggregation Hydrionis cannot validate, and the tabular ones sit behind registration gates. The forest series has six observations across thirty-five years. No change in it can be dated more precisely than the interval it falls in, and a loss in 2003 is indistinguishable from one in 2009.
Continuity	Version 1.0.0, released 2026-08-27. 1 recorded version; breaking changes and corrections are listed in the changelog above.
Last read from the publisher	2026-08-27 · publisher updates annually
Redistribution	Permitted by the upstream licences
Commercial reuse	Not established by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this.
Methodology	How this was produced