USDA-NASS RELEASES NEW GEOSPATIAL DATA PRODUCTS
News Date July 28, 2009
USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) has 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 entire inventory of CDL products, including metadata and accuracy assessments, is available online at the USDA National Resource Conservation Service’s Geospatial Data Gateway at: http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov) and the NASS website at: http://www.nass.usda.gov/research/Cropland/SARS1a.htm. (Contact: Charlie Ingram)