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•The Cropland Data Layer Program provides the
Agency with internal proprietary county and state level indications of major
commodities, and secondarily provides the public with "statewide"
(where available) mosaicked categorized output products after the public
release of county estimates.
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•Satellite based estimates will not completely
replace surveys of farmers for several reasons: acreage planted estimates are done in June,
before the crop canopy fully develops; cloud problems can cause loss of large
areas; and the enumerators ability to ask farmers other questions, not
related to acreage during interviews.
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•This project builds upon the USDA's National
Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) traditional crop acreage estimation
program, and integrates the enumerator collected ground survey data with
satellite imagery to create an unbiased statistical estimator of crop area at
the state and county level for internal use.
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•No farmer reported data is revealed, nor can it
be derived in the publicly releasable Cropland Data Layer product.
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•Up to two years worth of ortho-rectified
categorized images where applicable are published on the DVD, along with
associated accuracy statistics.
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•A freeware browser “ArcReader” (Environmental
Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA) is bundled onto the DVD, allowing
for users without a GIS or image processing software package to be able to
view the CDL products.
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•An “ArcReader” project is built on the Cropland
DVD to assist the user in browsing the CDL and any ancillary vector data
layers.
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