Fen et al. (2026) Satellite Mapping of Annual Center Pivot Irrigation Expansion in Africa’s Hyper-Arid Regions from 1972 to 2025

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Remote Sensing
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-09-12
• Authors: Chen Fen, Shen Ping, Tim Van de Voorde, Dar A. Roberts
• DOI: 10.3390/rs18183142

Research Groups

• African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
• University of California, Berkeley (Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics)

Short Summary

This study mapped the expansion of center pivot irrigation systems (CPISs) across Africa's hyper-arid regions from 1972 to 2025 using satellite imagery, revealing a significant increase in irrigated cropland equipped with CPISs.

Objective

• Investigate the spatiotemporal development of CPIS-equipped cropland in Africa's hyper-arid regions over the past five decades

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Continental scale (Africa's hyper-arid regions)
• Temporal Scale: Annual from 1972 to 2025

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Cascade Mask R-CNN instance segmentation model with a Swin Transformer backbone
• Data sources: Landsat and Sentinel-2 archived satellite imagery

Main Results

• The total area of irrigated cropland equipped with CPISs in Africa's hyper-arid regions expanded from 1110 ha in 1972 to 803,038 ha in 2025.
• The rate of expansion showed a gradually increasing trend prior to 2008, followed by accelerating rates since then.

Contributions

• This study provides the first detailed annual data on the spatial extent of CPIS-equipped cropland in Africa's hyper-arid regions, highlighting the potential risks associated with large-scale irrigation projects in areas with limited freshwater resources.

Funding

• This research was funded by the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and the University of California, Berkeley's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Citation

@article{Fen2026Satellite,
  author = {Fen, Chen and Ping, Shen and Voorde, Tim Van de and Roberts, Dar A.},
  title = {Satellite Mapping of Annual Center Pivot Irrigation Expansion in Africa’s Hyper-Arid Regions from 1972 to 2025},
  journal = {Remote Sensing},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.3390/rs18183142},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18183142}
}