Science activity

"US Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) collects and provides timely, accurate, and useful statistical information in service to US agriculture. The Spatial Analysis Research Section (SARS) within the Research and Development Division of NASS has produced a yearly Cropland Data Layer (CDL) product based on mid-resolution satellite data and high quality ground truth since 1997. This agricultural geospatial data is a crop and other specific land cover classification encompassing the entire contiguous United States. It provides geo-referenced, high accuracy, 30 or 56 m resolution, crop specific cropland land cover information. This product has been extensively used by policy and decision makers, scientists, researchers, educators, and farm producers for land cover monitoring, agricultural sustainability, crop acreage and yield estimation,disaster assessment, bioenergy crop inventory, food security policy, environmental assessment, carbon accounting, and other research interests that are of vital importance to American agriculture and its economy."