CropScape
Introduction
Farmapper is integrated with USDA CropScape service hosting Cropland data layer produced by National Agricultural Statistics Service (“NASS”) of US Department of Agriculture (“USDA”). More about the USDA data collections methods for the CDL can be found here. This integration allows you to get the crop data statistics for your farm tracts and easily save the files to your Farmapper digital locker. It’s just few clicks away.
The service generates documents with a map of areas selected by you, which will have different colors depending on what was cropped here by year. An explanation of what the colors mean is in the legend on the right side of the document. These data cover the period from 2010 to the previous year.
Generating CropScape files
To generate a CropScape document, click the “Reports” projects page and choose “Cropscape” Figure 1. The "CropScape" window will then be displayed.
Selecting the areas for which the CropScape document is to be generated.
You have two options to choose the tracts for which you want to generate a CropScape document.
First, you can choose the tract(s) in the tract list Figure 2. Then, in the list in the CropScape window you will only see those tract(s) that you have selected earlier.
If you do not select any tracts in the tract list and choose to generate a CropScape document then the list in the CropScape window will select all tracts from your farm tract list automatically Figure 3.
Regardless of which selection method you choose, you can always change the selection in the CropScape window. In the lower left corner of the CropScape window, there are two buttons "Select all" and "Deselect all", which are used to select or deselect all items on the list Figure 4.
Selecting year and generating mode
When you select the proper tracts, it's time to go to the selecting year and generating mode.
The choice of a year of data is very simple. Simply click on the year in the "Selecting year of data" window and a dropdown list with available years. Choose the year which interests you. As you already know, the range of years to choose covers years from 2010 to the previous year.
We have two modes of generating documents. The first is the "Generate document for each tract". After selecting this mode, you will generate as many CropScape documents as you chose tracts, ie one document for one tract. You must remember that the tract can not be larger than 200,000 acres.
The second mode "Generate one document with all tracts (bounding box)", generating one document with all selected tracts Figure 5 . This means that a square will appear on the document, containing all selected tracts. If you choose this mode, you must also enter your own name for the generated document. You must remember that the area can not be larger than 200,000 acres.
The last thing you need to do to generate the documents is to click "Generate".
Where you can find CropScape files and how they look like?
You can find the generated documents in "Docs" tab Figure 6. Click the document and it will open in the next window. Figure 7 Figure 8 You must remember that you must allow the browser to open pop-up windows.
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