Has pasture already peaked in 2000? The first independent global assessment (Steffen Fritz)

“Has pasture already peaked in 2000? The first independent global statistical assessment of grassland, livestock association, and change” by Steffen Fritz The Open-Earth Monitor Global Workshop 2026 "Next-Generation EO & GeoAI Built on Openness and Distributed Data" 7-9 October 2026, Barcelona, Spain https://earthmonitor.org/global-workshop-2026/ The Carbon Lab research consortium, Global Pasture Watch, has produced comprehensive global pasture maps at 30-meter resolution covering the period 2000–2022. Generating consistent global information on pasture is statistically challenging due to the need to discriminate among multiple grassland types, management intensities, and closely related land-cover categories. Here, we present the first statistically rigorous global area estimates for the grassland domain, distinguishing six grassland classes: (1) natural and semi-natural permanent grasslands without visible livestock, (2) natural permanent woody vegetation within open woodlands, (3) semi-natural permanent grasslands with visible livestock presence, (4) temporary grasslands linked to other land use, (5) improved permanent grasslands associated with livestock, and (6) improved permanent grasslands associated with other land use, alongside estimates for other land-cover classes. We describe the sampling design used to validate the 2020 static map and to derive unbiased global and continental area estimates across all grassland classes, based on an initial global sample of 50,000 locations. The design incorporates stratification targeted at rare classes, systematic interpretation protocols, and estimation procedures that explicitly propagate interpreter uncertainty into class-specific area estimates and confidence intervals. Additional temporal samples were drawn to quantify grassland dynamics over the periods 2000–2010, 2010–2015, and 2015–2022. Particular emphasis was placed on securing sufficient samples for improved and temporary grassland classes, enabling statistically robust estimates of their global extent and change. Together, these results provide the first consistent quantification of the global distribution and dynamics of grassland systems, supporting applications in land-use modelling, biodiversity assessment, carbon-cycle research, and analyses of management intensity and human influence. They also contribute to ongoing discussions around a potential global “pasture peak,” for which emerging evidence suggests a decline beginning around the year 2000.