Crop diversity Land use composition

The map shows crop diversity in the form of the Shannon Hill number. The indicator values, which are initially calculated for 100 ha hexagons across Germany, are aggregated at the level of soil-climate regions and presented as an average for the entire observation period from 2017 to 2023.

Crop diversity exhibits distinct spatial patterns that reflect the diversity of agricultural regions and site-specific factors in Germany. Regions with high indicator values are found, for example, in southern Germany (Franconia, the East Bavarian Uplands) but also in the West German Lowlands and the Lower Weser Uplands. Areas with low crop diversity include, for example, grassland-dominated regions such as the Alpine foothills and the forage-producing regions of the North-West German Lowlands and Schleswig-Holstein. Land use in North-East Germany is characterised by comparatively large arable fields and correspondingly low indicator values at the level of analysis (100 ha hexagons). 
 

The Germany-wide aggregation of the Shannon Hill number shows a slightly positive trend in crop diversity for the period 2017–2023.

The calculation of the indicators and trends is based on the nationwide, wall-to-wall mapping of agricultural land use using dense time series of Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8/9 Earth observation satellite data. In a first step, the main crop types (including grassland and other land cover classes) are identified for each image pixel from the satellite data. The methodology is based on an adaptation of the approach described in Pham et al. (2024). For the calculation of the indicators, pixel values are aggregated into homogeneous areas. The delineation of field boundaries is also based on remote sensing data and follows the methodology described by Tetteh et al. (2023).
The agricultural land-use maps are freely available at:  https://eodata.thuenen.de/

For further information on the calculation of the indicators, see the indicator sheet