WASHINGTON — The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service recently released updates to its online geospatial exploring tool, CropScape.
2011 Cropland Data Layer products, which are derived from satellite image observations at 30-meter (0.22 acres per pixel) resolution, help users visualize how the volatile weather events of 2011 affected cropland in the U.S.
The CropScape tool is designed to provide the public with easy access to interactive visualization, geospatial queries and dissemination without the need to download specialized software.
New version
Coinciding with the release of the 2011 Cropland Data Layer, NASS will also release a new CropScape version with new functional capabilities and enhancements.
The Cropland Data Layer images released today were collected from the Disaster Monitoring Constellation: Deimos-1 and UK2, and Landsat Thematic Mapper satellites.
In addition to the current update, CropScape includes historical data. The NASS CropScape team compiled the remaining historic state Cropland Data Layers for 2008 this past year.
Cropland data layers are now available back to 2008 for 48 states and at some locales; data are available tracing back to 1997.
CropScape was developed in cooperation with the Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems at George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.
The online tool is operated by NASS’s Research and Development Division and hosted and maintained by the Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems at George Mason University.
Website
For more information about CropScape, and the Cropland Data Layer visit http://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape. NASS provides accurate, timely, useful and objective statistics in service to U.S. agriculture.
Sign up at http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/subscriptions and look for “NASS Data User Community to provide feedback on products and services.
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