WaPOR, remote sensing for water productivity
Date modified: 19 March 2026
Product Overview
Background
WaPOR (the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) portal to monitor agriculture Water Productivity through Open access of Remotely sensed derived data) aims to assist partner countries in developing their capacity to monitor and improve water and land productivity in agriculture, both rainfed and irrigated, responding therefore to the challenges that are posed by the dwindling of freshwater resources and the need to sustain agricultural production to ensure food security in the face of a changing climate.
WaPOR provides a collection of datasets related to vegetation productivity and water consumption, and associated meteorological and physical conditions such as soil moisture and precipitation. These datasets can be combined with Digital Earth Africa products, services, and workflows for a range of applications including:
Monitoring drought conditions
Monitoring the water use efficiency of crops
Mapping irrigated areas
Estimating crop water requirements
Irrigation scheduling and budgeting
The applications of WaPOR data go beyond water productivity and agriculture. Any application that would benefit from hydrological information and/or vegetation productivity could use WaPOR data.
Specifications
Spatial and temporal coverage
WaPOR data has three levels:
Global 300m resolution
National 100m resolution (note that this now covers the African continent)
Sub-national 20m resolution
The table below covers L1 and L2 datasets. L3 datasets can be viewed in the WaPOR maps platform which is built with the same software as Digital Earth Africa Maps. L3 datasets cover several regions of interest in northern and eastern Africa. It is recommended that the WaPOR maps platform is inspected to check the availability of level, variable, and temporal frequency combinations for your area of interest. The maps platform also shows map codes in the data description.
Mapset codes are structured as level-variable-temporal frequency as shown below. The temporal frequencies available are:
A - annual
M - monthly
D - dekadal (10 days)
So, for level 3 net primary productivity at dekadal intervals the code is L3-NPP-D.
Table 1: L1 and L2 dataset details.
Mapset Code |
Mapset Description |
Units |
Scale Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
L1-AETI-A |
Actual EvapoTranspiration and Interception (Global - Annual - 300m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L1-AETI-D |
Actual EvapoTranspiration and Interception (Global - Dekadal - 300m) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L1-AETI-M |
Actual EvapoTranspiration and Interception (Global - Monthly - 300m) |
mm/month |
0.1 |
L1-E-A |
Evaporation (Global - Annual - 300m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L1-E-D |
Evaporation (Global - Dekadal - 300m) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L1-GBWP-A |
Gross biomass water productivity (Annual - 300m) |
kg/m\(^3\) |
0.001 |
L1-I-A |
Interception (Global - Annual - 300m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L1-I-D |
Interception (Global - Dekadal - 300m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L1-NBWP-A |
Net biomass water productivity (Annual - 300m) |
kg/m\(^3\) |
0.001 |
L1-NPP-D |
Net Primary Production (Global - Dekadal - 300m) |
gC/m\(^2\)/day |
0.001 |
L1-NPP-M |
Net Primary Production (Global - Monthly - 300m) |
gC/m\(^2\)/month |
0.001 |
L1-PCP-A |
Precipitation (Global - Annual - Approximately 5km) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L1-PCP-D |
Precipitation (Global - Dekadal - Approximately 5km) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L1-PCP-E |
Precipitation (Global - Daily - Approximately 5km) |
mm |
0.1 |
L1-PCP-M |
Precipitation (Global - Monthly - Approximately 5km) |
mm/month |
0.1 |
L1-QUAL-LST-D |
Quality land surface temperature (Global - Dekadal - 300m) |
d |
1 |
L1-QUAL-NDVI-D |
Quality of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (Global - Dekadal - 300m) |
Number of dekads (D) |
|
L1-RET-A |
Reference Evapotranspiration (Global - Annual - Approximately 30km) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L1-RET-D |
Reference Evapotranspiration (Global - Dekadal - Approximately 30km) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L1-RET-E |
Reference Evapotranspiration (Global - Daily - Approximately 30km) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L1-RET-M |
Reference Evapotranspiration (Global - Monthly - Approximately 30km) |
mm/month |
0.1 |
L1-RSM-D |
Relative Soil Moisture (Global - Dekadal - 300m) |
% |
0.001 |
L1-T-A |
Transpiration (Global - Annual - 300m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L1-T-D |
Transpiration (Global - Dekadal - 300m) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L1-TBP-A |
Total Biomass Production (Global - Annual - 300m) |
kg/ha |
1 |
L2-AETI-A |
Actual EvapoTranspiration and Interception (National - Annual - 100m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L2-AETI-D |
Actual EvapoTranspiration and Interception (National - Annual - 100m) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L2-AETI-M |
Actual EvapoTranspiration and Interception (National - Annual - 100m) |
mm/month |
0.1 |
L2-E-A |
Evaporation (National - Annual - 100m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L2-E-D |
Evaporation (National - Dekadal - 100m) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L2-GBWP-A |
Gross biomass water productivity (Annual - 100m) |
kg/m\(^3\) |
0.001 |
L2-I-A |
Interception (National - Annual - 100m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L2-I-D |
Interception (National - Dekadal - 100m) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L2-NBWP-A |
Net biomass water productivity (Annual - 100m) |
kg/m\(^3\) |
0.001 |
L2-NPP-D |
Net Primary Production (National - Dekadal - 100m) |
gC/m\(^2\)/day |
0.001 |
L2-NPP-M |
Net Primary Production (National - Monthly - 100m) |
gC/m\(^2\)/month |
0.001 |
L2-QUAL-NDVI-D |
Quality of normalized difference vegetation index (National - Dekadal - 100m) |
d |
1 |
L2-RSM-D |
Relative Soil Moisture (National - Dekadal - 100m) |
% |
0.001 |
L2-T-A |
Transpiration (National - Annual - 100m) |
mm/year |
0.1 |
L2-T-D |
Transpiration (National - Dekadal - 100m) |
mm/day |
0.1 |
L2-TBP-A |
Total Biomass Production (National - Annual - 100m) |
kg/ha |
1 |
Technical information
WaPOR products are derived from various complex methods, including surface energy balance models for evapotranspiration and light use efficiency models for primary productivity. Methodology is published and updated with each version release in Peiser et al. (2017), the latest being the version 3 methodology.
References
FAO. 2024. WaPOR methodology: Version 3 release, 2024. Rome.
License
The data is provided free of charge, without restriction of use. For the full license information see the CCA Share-Alike 4.0.
Acknowledgements
Food and Agriculture Organization
Data Acess
Amazon Web Service
Table 2: AWS data acess details.
AWS S3 details |
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|---|---|
Bucket ARD |
|
Bucket |
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