Washington, DC
July 23, 2009
The U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s National
Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) today released new
satellite images depicting agricultural land cover for the 2008
crop year. The images, referred to as the Cropland Data Layer
(CDL), identify geospatial crop locations in three U.S. regions:
the Mid-Atlantic and, for the first time, the Southwest and
Southeast.
The CDL information is a useful tool for projects ranging from
monitoring crop rotational patterns, land use change and
environmental modeling, to water resource and carbon emission
management. Agribusinesses and farmers, as well as government,
researchers and academic institutions, use the CDLs to study
pesticide risk, epidemiology, transportation, fertilizer usage
and potential, market data analysis and carbon dioxide fluxes.
The Mid-Atlantic region is the largest CDL and covers Delaware,
Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,
Virginia and West Virginia. The Southwest region CDL includes
Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, while the Southeast region
CDL is comprised of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and
Tennessee.
NASS produced the CDLs using satellite images observed at 56
meter (0.775 acre) resolution and collected from the
Resourcesat-1 Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS), Landsat
Thematic Mapper and Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The collection of images was then
categorized using on-the-ground information including field
location, crop type, land cover, elevation, tree canopy and
urban infrastructure.
The entire inventory of CDL products, including metadata and
accuracy assessments, is available online at the USDA National
Resource Conservation Service’s
Geospatial Data
Gateway and the NASS website (http://www.nass.usda.gov/research/Cropland/SARS1a.htm) |
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