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Abstract

Global population growth and land use change are nowadays among the most critical challenges to guarantee Global Food and water security. Urban and land regional development plans need a deep understanding and quantification of agricultural and water resources risks. Most of the natural resources related to crop production as well as most of the vulnerable areas are distributed within floodplains. However, there is a research gap in a large scale homogeneous and robust quantification of cropland areas endangered in flood prone areas. This work is aimed to assess the potential impact of floods on croplands. Global datasets of croplands and floodplain extents are processed to quantify their geospatial distribution and support investigations on the complex human-cropland-floodplain interactions at continental scales. The Global Cropland Area Database (GCAD), the Global Floodplain Dataset (GFPLAIN250m) and the JRC Global Flood hazard maps are used in conjunction with continental remotely-sensed data representing free flowing (versus artificially regulated) rivers and urban density maps. Results show that almost 20% of the global crop production is located in floodplains, but there is a greater variability if the analysis is disaggregated by crop type. We identified the major Asian river basins as the most exposed by floods in terms crop areas. Results can support large scale efficient and safe floodplain management for sustainable food security management, protection and intervention strategies at different geographic, climatic and socio-economic scales.