Cropscape - Book Mark It!

[FarmerDan]

This could go multiple locations. Some of you may know I'm very much into maps - like all things geospatial. It puts bread on my table. There's this thing in the industry called remote sensing. Aerial photography, satellite imagery, that kind of product. You're most familiar with Google Earth and what you see there from high in the sky.

Those pictures also contains lots of other information that can be used to determine types of land cover -- habitat! That's what it's all about. Habitat. There are several federal and state agencies providing land cover (habitat) images.

USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) provides very detailed estimates of cropland by crop and other habitat. They promote it as being 80-85% accurate. In my part of the world it's much more than that.

I've been fooling with it for a couple of years and have recently become more intimately involved.

You can find it here:
https://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape/ (see the live link below)





https://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape/

The table is a result of me drawing around (creating an area of interest) the habitat surrounding my 400 acres. I've seen it on an aerial image and now I know kinda sorta how much of what. Now we can start to compare notes at a more meaningful level. That's my thought.

 

[Mortenson]

This is interesting to me, and I know you're a big map guy. Have you fooled around much with qgis? I just downloaded it and it seems pretty intimidating. I'd like to get one of those silver relief maps of my land at some point.

 

[TMIL]

Wow, I'm going to be bookmarking this for certain.

 

[TMIL]

In my particular area, all of the old crop fields that have been ignored for 10-20 years are tangled mess of Autumn Olive, blackberries, persimmon, and various other wild things. Those areas are all listed as grass/pasture in the database. Knowing the area, its easy enough to know the difference from the CRP bush hogged ground, though. I like it.

 

[FarmerDan]

This is interesting to me, and I know you're a big map guy. Have you fooled around much with qgis? I just downloaded it and it seems pretty intimidating. I'd like to get one of those silver relief maps of my land at some point.

I have played with QGIS as I was looking for a functional and free substitute for the expensive ESRI products. It's good. I liked it. yes, GIS can be intimidating for an hour or two. You have to be willing to make the investment in time. I think there's nothing intuitive about it. But, if you use Google Earth you're half way to your goal.

Illinois?
http://clearinghouse.isgs.illinois.edu/data/elevation/illinois-height-modernization-ilhmp-lidar-data

See if there is a "derivative" for your county. You can view it at the link above and/or download the files required to view it in QGIS.

 

[Tap]

Thanks Dan.

 

[dsinwi]

Thanks for the link. Been using the GIS tools quite a lot. Takes some getting used to but very interesting.

 

[Mortenson]

Thanks Dan. The link you gave shows my county not only with no Lidar imaging, but it's not even planned! Bummer. I'll have to learn how to do it the hard way. The Cropscape shows a see of green and yellow in my region.

 

[j-bird]

So my county.......


So percentages....
corn: 31.6%
Soybeans: 32%
Deciduous forest: 19.6%
Grass/Pasture: 6.7%
Development: 7.4%

So these numbers account for 97.3% of everything in my county. Corn, soybeans and pasture account for roughly 70%+ and what we would consider deer cover is roughly 20% with development being roughly the other 10%.

On a more localized basis (the 2 square miles my property touches.....things get a little better.....with corn, soybeans and pastures being 70%, but the "cover" improves to 25% with development being much lower.