The creation of a national agricultural land use dataset: Combining pycnophylactic interpolation with dasymetric mapping techniques

Abstract

Agricultural Census data is summarised over spatially coarse reporting units for reasons of farm confidentiality. This is problematic for research at a local level. This article describes an approach combining dasymetric and volume preserving techniques to create a national land use dataset at 1 km2 resolution. The results for an English county are compared with contemporaneous aggregated habitat data. The results show that the accurate estimates of local agricultural land use (Arable and Grass) patterns can be estimated when individual 1 km squares are combined into blocks of > 9 squares, thereby providing local estimates of agricultural land use. This in turn allows more detailed modelling of land uses related to specific livestock and cropping activities. The dataset created by this work has been subject to extensive external validation through its incorporation into a number of other national models: nitrate leaching (e.g. MAGPIE, NEAP-N), waste, and pathogen modelling related to agricultural activity. © 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.