Quantifying tropical tree cover loss driven by cropland conversion

Cropland conversion is a significant driver of tropical tree cover loss. Recent research has mapped tree cover loss as well as cropland expansion in separate themes using satellite data, but the amount of tree cover loss driven by cropland expansion and the spatiotemporal dynamics are less well understood. The objective of this research is to conduct mapping and quantitative assessments of tree cover to cropland conversion using a combination of satellite-derived land cover change products and design-based inference. We combined the University of Maryland global tree cover loss and global cropland gain maps, both at 30 m resolution, to generate tree cover-to-cropland conversion over five epochs between 2004 and 2023. We employed this new set of maps to aid selection of a stratified random sample for area estimation. We used high-resolution images in Google Earth and time series of Landsat images to interpret the land cover and land use change for each sample unit. This sample allowed us to estimate the area of tree cover-to-cropland conversion over the five epochs and subsequently the temporal trends. Our results suggested that tropical tree cover-to-cropland conversion reached a total of 23.1 ± 2.1 Mha between 2004 and 2023. These results are important for understanding the socioeconomic drivers of deforestation in the tropics.