The Global Irrigated Area Mapping (GIAM) project was initiated by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) with financial support from the Comprehensive Assessment (CA) from 2002 to 2004. We would like to thank Dr. David Molden, leader of the CA. Recent GIAM support is through IWMI core funds.

Various people have made this project a success. We are grateful for the review comments received from Robert Zomer, Francois Molle, David Molden, Meredith Giordano and Charlotte De Fraiture.

There are two very unique ground truth data sets of the World. First and foremost, we can not adequately thank the people behind the degree confluence project (http://www.confluence.org/), which is an organized sampling of the World at every 1 degree by 1 degree. It is a project in progress, and currently there are 43,000 odd digital photos from about 3900 confluences. Thanks to Aminul Islam, Sarath G. and Ranjtih AD who composed these data into GIS formats and made them available through IWMI’s data storehouse pathway (http://www.iwmidsp.org). There is also another unique ground truth data of the World, which is mainly a compilation of the various past research efforts of the GIAM project scientists (see Project team).

We would like to thank people behind Google Earth. The high-resolution “Zoom in views” of Google Earth were very useful in class identification, labeling and in accuracy assessment. The Geocover 150-m data product was very useful in class identification and naming process. We would like to thank everyone who were behind this idea-NASA pathfinder program, NASA databuy program, Earthsat company which actually did the work, and ESRI which made the 150-m data of the World available in JPEG2000 format.

The efforts of Dr. Trent Wade Biggs, Mr. Gangadhara Rao Parthasaradhi, and Mr. Murali Krishna Gumma, as well as support from Dr. Christopher Scott of IWMI India office in Krishna basin field work are well appreciated. Dr. Bharat R. Sharma of IWMI India Delhi office and Dr. N.P. Singh, Head of the Regional Research Station of the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, New Delhi provided field expertise and logistical support for the Ganges basin ground truthing effort. Ms. Yualin Li was instrumental in getting the Ruhuna Basin (Sri Lanka) ground truth data. Prof. Hector Maletta, Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, Argentina helped us understand one of the classes in Argentina. We thank him for his very valuable insights.

The collaborative discussions with Food and Agricultural Organization\University of Frankfurt (FAO\UF) were very useful. We would particularly like to thank Dr. Stefan Siebert, Dr. Jippe Hoogeveen, Dr. Jean-Marc Faures, Dr. Karen Frenken, and Dr. Steduto Pasquale.

Genesiis Software Company and their team did an excellent and timely job in building the web site. We are very thankful to their dynamic CEO Senaka Weerasooria and his excellent team (Jogen de Almeida, Nishad Wijesekara). Naming the web page and our product line was more difficult than we thought. We thank those who contributed to the lively discussions: Meredith Giordano, Robert Zomer, and Frank Rijsberman.

Finally, we want to thank Prof. Frank Rijsberman, DG of IWMI and Dr. Gerard O'Donoghue, DDG of IWMI for their financial, moral, and intellectual support without which any of this would have been possible.