The 2012 USDA CropScape Cropland Data Layer (CDL) is released @ 30m

The 2012 national CDL is released @ 30m – The 2012 cropland data layer (CDL) product for the Continental United States (CONUS) is released in CropScape (http://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape) on January 31, 2013.

This categorized geospatial product at 30m resolution is produced by U. S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service from satellite observation data and ground truth data. User can access the state of interest only http://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape/StateAbbr (e.g. http://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape/VA).
New features which have been added in CropScape include:

1. More map layers including river, lake layers and road layers at national and regional level are added.

2. A crop mask data layer which is generated from the 2007-2011 CDL data is added.

3. A Swipe function is added. This new feature allows users to swipe the CDL images of two years in the map panel to view the differences interactively;

4. AOL import & export function is added. It allows user to import and export the area of interest (AOI) in the format of GML and ESRI Shapefile;

5. New capability of uploading the raster file in GeoTiff format to the portal and add it as an auxiliary layer using WMS;

6. Added the option of displaying agricultural categories related information only in the analysis result;

7. New capability allowing to display the crop change result as a new layer in the map panel;

8. A developer guide is released for user to utilize Web geospatial data services (OGC WMS and WCS) and Web geoprocessing services;

9. The mosaicked CDL file for CONUS is allowed for users to download;

10. An auxiliary file (.vat.dbf) is provided with the cdl file for displaying category names, color values, and opacity value in ArcGIS software.

CropScape was developed in cooperation with the Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems at George Mason University, Fairfax, Va. The research and development of CropScape and the NASS partnership with George Mason University reflect NASS’s continued commitment to improve U.S. agricultural production, sustainability and food security

The George Mason University group responsible for creating CropScape developed standard Web service for invocations or workflow in other web geospatial applications available at http://nassgeodata.gmu.edu:8080/axis2/services/CDLService?wsdl. There are 7 operations, including GetCDLStat, GetCDLImage, GetCDLComp, GetCDLFile, GetCDLValue, ExtractCDLByValues, and GetCDLPDF. This Web service supports HTTP GET/KVP POST/XML and SOAP encoding. Click here (standard Web service examples http://www.nass.usda.gov/research/Cropland/docs/WebService.html) for examples of the HTTP GET requests.

The George Mason University group responsible for creating the CropScape website offer an online developer’s guide available at http://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape/devhelp/help.html.