Building National Spatial Data Infrastructures

A Web Service based U.S Cropland Visualization, Dissemination and Querying System

—Zhengwei Yang, USDA/NASS

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) produces the national crop specific land cover classification - Cropland Data Layer (CDL) starting from 2009. The CDL data are widely used for a variety of applications in climate change and environmental ecosystem studies, environmental health research, agricultural production decision making and NASS crop acreage and yield estimation. To facilitate the application and dissemination of this data layer, a web-service based interactive map visualization, dissemination, querying system is proposed. The system adopts service oriented architecture and OGC standards and specifications compliant web services, and re-uses functions/algorithms from George Mason University's developed GeoBrain Technology. It enables on-line US cropland exploring, visualization, querying and dissemination via interactive maps. The data can be directly exported to Google Earth for mashup or delivered to other applications via web services. This system greatly improves equal-accessibility, visualization and dissemination and facilitates crop geospatial information usage.