# A Sentinel-2 multi-year, multi-country benchmark dataset for crop classification and segmentation with deep learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.00951 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00951/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Apr 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06868/) (2017)
- [EuroSAT: A Novel Dataset and Deep Learning Benchmark for Land Use and Land Cover Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.00029/) (2017)
- [Convolutional LSTM Network: A Machine Learning Approach for Precipitation Nowcasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.04214/) (2015)
- [Adversarial Discriminative Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05464/) (2017)
- [Deep CORAL: Correlation Alignment for Deep Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.01719/) (2016)
- [Multimodal Unsupervised Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04732/) (2018)
- [Deep Visual Domain Adaptation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03601/) (2018)
- [Unified Deep Supervised Domain Adaptation and Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.10190/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Pixel-Level Domain Adaptation with Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.05424/) (2016)
- [DRIT++: Diverse Image-to-Image Translation via Disentangled Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.01270/) (2019)
- [BigEarthNet: A Large-Scale Benchmark Archive For Remote Sensing Image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06148/) (2019)
- [DeepJDOT: Deep Joint Distribution Optimal Transport for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10081/) (2018)
- [Mind the Class Weight Bias: Weighted Maximum Mean Discrepancy for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.00609/) (2017)
- [Panoptic Segmentation of Satellite Image Time Series with Convolutional Temporal Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07933/) (2021)
- [Land-Cover Classification with High-Resolution Remote Sensing Images Using Transferable Deep Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.05713/) (2018)
- [Bi-Directional ConvLSTM U-Net with Densley Connected Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00166/) (2019)
- [Beyond Sharing Weights for Deep Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.06432/) (2016)
- [Temporal Convolutional Neural Network for the Classification of Satellite Image Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10166/) (2018)
- [Self-attention for raw optical Satellite Time Series Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10536/) (2019)
- [Satellite Image Time Series Classification with Pixel-Set Encoders and Temporal Self-Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07757/) (2019)
- [Multi-Temporal Land Cover Classification with Sequential Recurrent Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02080/) (2018)
- [Crop mapping from image time series: deep learning with multi-scale label hierarchies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08820/) (2021)
- [Learning Deep Feature Representations with Domain Guided Dropout for Person Re-identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.07528/) (2016)
- [BreizhCrops: A Time Series Dataset for Crop Type Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11893/) (2019)
- [Fine-grained Recognition in the Wild: A Multi-Task Domain Adaptation Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.02476/) (2017)
- [ColorMapGAN: Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation Using Color Mapping Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.12859/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [FoMo: Multi-Modal, Multi-Scale and Multi-Task Remote Sensing Foundation Models for Forest Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10114/) (2023)
- [Kuro Siwo: 33 billion m2 under the water. A global multi-temporal satellite dataset for rapid flood mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12056/) (2023)
- [Deep Learning for Satellite Image Time Series Analysis: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03936/) (2024)
- [CaBuAr: California Burned Areas dataset for delineation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11519/) (2024)
- [SICKLE: A Multi-Sensor Satellite Imagery Dataset Annotated with Multiple Key Cropping Parameters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00069/) (2023)
- [M3LEO: A Multi-Modal, Multi-Label Earth Observation Dataset Integrating Interferometric SAR and Multispectral Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04230/) (2024)
- [A systematic review of the use of Deep Learning in Satellite Imagery for Agriculture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.01272/) (2022)
- [Towards Space-to-Ground Data Availability for Agriculture Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07721/) (2022)
- [SwissCrop25: A National Multi-Year Benchmark for Operational Crop Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09497/) (2026)
- [AgriPotential: A Novel Multi-Spectral and Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Dataset for Agricultural Potentials](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11740/) (2025)
- [A Joint Learning Framework with Feature Reconstruction and Prediction for Incomplete Satellite Image Time Series in Agricultural Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19159/) (2025)
- [Data-Centric AI for Tropical Agricultural Mapping: Challenges, Strategies and Scalable Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16207/) (2025)
- [Alberta Wells Dataset: Pinpointing Oil and Gas Wells from Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09032/) (2024)
- [Phenology-based learning framework for yield estimation and harvest forecasting of raspberry fruits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00967/) (2024)
- [Weakly Supervised Framework Considering Multi-temporal Information for Large-scale Cropland Mapping with Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18475/) (2024)
- [T3S: Think in Thermal Time for Generalizable Crop Mapping from Satellite Image Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12885/) (2025)
- [A Modelling and Evaluation Framework for EuroCrops-Driven Sentinel-2 Crop Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00676/) (2026)
- [AgroBench: A Reproducible Multimodal Benchmark for Weakly Supervised Crop Yield Learning from County Statistics and Pixel Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.26809/) (2026)
- [Transferability and operational reliability of a Prithvi crop classification foundation model under phenological and geographic shift across three continents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.08810/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this work we introduce Sen4AgriNet, a Sentinel-2 based time series multi country benchmark dataset, tailored for agricultural monitoring applications with Machine and Deep Learning. Sen4AgriNet dataset is annotated from farmer declarations collected via the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS) for harmonizing country wide labels. These declarations have only recently been made available as open data, allowing for the first time the labeling of satellite imagery from ground truth data. We proceed to propose and standardise a new crop type taxonomy across Europe that address Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) needs, based on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Indicative Crop Classification scheme. Sen4AgriNet is the only multi-country, multi-year dataset that includes all spectral information. It is constructed to cover the period 2016-2020 for Catalonia and France, while it can be extended to include additional countries. Currently, it contains 42.5 million parcels, which makes it significantly larger than other available archives. We extract two sub-datasets to highlight its value for diverse Deep Learning applications; the Object Aggregated Dataset (OAD) and the Patches Assembled Dataset (PAD). OAD capitalizes zonal statistics of each parcel, thus creating a powerful label-to-features instance for classification algorithms. On the other hand, PAD structure generalizes the classification problem to parcel extraction and semantic segmentation and labeling. The PAD and OAD are examined under three different scenarios to showcase and model the effects of spatial and temporal variability across different years and different countries.