Summary
Livestock sector planning, policy development
and analysis are frequently hampered by the paucity of reliable and
accessible information on the distribution, abundance and use of livestock.
In an attempt to redress this shortfall, the Food and Agriculture
Organizations Animal Production and Health Division (FAO-AGA)
has, in collaboration with the Environmental Research Group Oxford,
developed the Gridded Livestock of the World database
which provide the first standardised global, sub-national resolution
maps of the major agricultural livestock species. These are now freely
available for download on the FAO website. The data are produced in
Environmental Systems Research
Institute grid format for cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, pigs,
chickens and other poultry. The map values are animal densities per
square kilometre, at a resolution of 3 minutes of arc (approximately
5 km at the Equator), and are derived from official census and
survey data. Reported statistics are then processed using a combination
of suitability masking and spatial disaggregation by statistical modelling
of livestock densities based on empirical relationships between livestock
densities and environmental variables in similar agro-ecological zones.
The spatial nature of these livestock data allows a wide array of
applications. Livestock distribution data give an estimation of production;
they evaluate impact (both of and on livestock) by applying a variety
of rates; and they provide the denominator in prevalence and incidence
estimates for epidemiological applications, and the host distributions
for transmission models.
Keywords
Disease,
Distribution, Food and Agriculture Organization, Geographic information
system, Gridded Livestock of the World, Livestock, Modelling, Production.
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