Pakistan Desertification Distribution Dataset, 1990-2020

Pakistan, located in South Asia, has long faced challenges such as desertification and its resulting consequences, including declining agricultural yields, water scarcity, food security crises, and loss of biodiversity. The lack of baseline and change data on desertification in this region directly impacts the sustainable development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

This study selected five desertification indicators: fractional vegetation cover (FVC), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), modified soil-adjusted vegetation index (MSAVI), surface albedo, and topsoil granularity index (TGSI). Through comparative evaluation, the optimal machine learning model (gradient boosting decision tree) was obtained. Based on Google Earth Engine and using Landsat remote sensing images, a dataset of Pakistan's desertification distribution with a 30 m spatial resolution was obtained for every five years from 1990 to 2020.