USDA Cropland Data Layer now available

The U.S. Department of Agriculture - National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) 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, the Southwest and Southeast.

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.
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 entire inventory of CDL products, including metadata and accuracy assessments, is available online at the USDA National Resource Conservation Service's Geospatial Data.