This new layer shows the most recent global model of the cattle distribution. The Values represent head densities (values per square kilometer).
Interactive map of the global cattle distribution (Click on the top left of the map for more info).
Livestock contributes directly to the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people, and affects the diet and health of many more. With estimated standing populations of 1.43 billion cattle, 1.87 billion sheep and goats, 0.98 billion pigs, and 19.60 billion chickens, reliable and accessible information on the distribution and abundance of livestock is needed for a many reasons. These include analyses of the social and economic aspects of the livestock sector; the environmental impacts of livestock such as the production and management of waste, greenhouse gas emissions and livestock-related land-use change and large-scale public health and epidemiological investigations. The Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW) database produced in 2007 proveed modeled livestock densities of the world, adjusted to match official (FAOSTAT) national estimates for the reference year 2005, at a spatial resolution of 3 minutes of arc (about 5 x 5 km at the equator). Recent methodological improvements have significantly enhanced these distributions: More up-to date and detailed sub-national livestock statistics have been collected; a new, higher resolution set of predictor variables is used; the analytical procedure has been revised and extended to include a more systematic assessment of the model accuracy and the representation of uncertainties associated with the predictions.
More information and access to the data of the GLW 2.0 are in the dedicated web-site: http://livestock.geo-wiki.org/.
The bibliographic reference to the GLW 2.0 is: Robinson TP, Wint GRW, Conchedda G, Van Boeckel TP, Ercoli V, Palamara E, Cinardi G, D’Aietti L, Hay SI, and Gilbert M. (2014) Mapping the Global Distribution of Livestock. PLoS ONE 9(5): e96084. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096084 The supplementary information includes a list of the observed data used to train this version of the cattle model.