Antananarivo - Madagascar - 2017, Land use reference spatial database

This vector format database (ESRI shape format) is made up of field surveys carried out during the end of the 2017 rainy season (March to April) which corresponds to the peak of the growing season. Study area is Antananarivo city, capital of Madagascar. GPS points were collected following an opportunistic sampling method (Lebourgeois, 2017). 2087 Waypoints were collected within the whole study area in order to have a representativeness of the existing types of crops and urban structures. GPS points have also been recorded for uncultivated and unbuilt plots such as savanna, forest or marsh. 981 additional polygons were digitized by photointerpretation of the Pleiades image for easily recognizable classes. The final ground database is thus composed of 3068 polygons including 1373 crops, 813 urban features and 882 other land uses. For agricultural plots, additional information on cropping practices was also recorded with each GPS point such as irrigation mode, mixed cropping, etc. For urban objects, the nomenclature was developed according to field observations and six classes were defined: (1) mixed habitat, (2) residential habitat, (3) traditional habitat, (4) industrial, commercial and military area, (5) brick extraction sites and (6) quarry landfill and construction site. This high variability is represented through a nomenclature organized according to 4 levels of details ranging from the most global (Level 1 – Cropland: 2 classes) to the most precise (Level 4 – Crop Class: 20 classes).