Land Use Misclassification Results in Water Use, Economic Value, and GHG Emission Discrepancies in California’s High-Intensity Agriculture Region

California’s San Joaquin Valley is both drought-prone and water-scarce but relies on high-intensity agriculture as its primary economy. Climate change adaptation strategies for require reliable highly resolved land use classification data to accurately account changes in crop water demand, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, farmgate revenue. Understanding direct indirect economic impacts from potential reduce groundwater overdrafts, such reductions the cultivated area or switching less water-intensive crops, unachievable if are too coarse inconsistent misclassified. This study quantified revenue, requirement, GHG emission discrepancies resulting misclassification United States’ most complex agricultural region, Valley. By comparing three commonly used datasets—CropScape, Land IQ, Kern County Agriculture—this found that CropScape led considerable revenue requirement compared other sources. Crop across all datasets resulted an underestimation of emissions. The total misclassified crops by 2016 dataset comparisons result underestimations around USD 3 billion overestimation LIQ Ag 72 million. Reducing essential crafting climate resilience strategies, especially California, which generates 50 annual faces increasing scarcity, aims reach carbon neutrality 2045. Additional investments needed produce spatial locally validated, regions dominated specialty with unique characteristics not well suited national mapping efforts.