2021 Statewide Crop Mapping Geodatabase
The Department of Water Resources (DWR) Land Use Program is releasing the final and official version of statewide Water Year (WY) 2021 land use data. The statewide WY 2021 dataset was initially released as provisional on April 7, 2023, based on requests by data users and partner agencies. This final release is part of DWR’s ongoing commitment to provide comprehensive, accurate, and more frequent statewide land use data through remote sensing and field surveys. Precise field level data on the composition and distribution of irrigated crops and fallow lands are needed to accurately assess and manage competing water demands, including the critical needs of urban areas and ecological uses under drought conditions, at both community and regional scales. These data are critical for local agencies trying to manage groundwater resources within Sustainable Groundwater Management Act mandates, are used to assess economic impacts to agricultural production systems and the associated workforce, identify potential adverse impacts to rural water sources and native lands, and are used as a primary input data layer to publicly available water management and planning tools such as OpenET. For these purposes, as well as many others, a spatial mapping base layer is essential for effective decision-making and other applications. In response to this need for information, Land IQ LLC was contracted by DWR to develop a comprehensive and accurate spatial land use database first for the 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2020 WYs and now for the WY 2021, covering over 10.7 million acres of agriculture on a field scale and additional areas of urban extent. The primary objective of this effort was to produce a comprehensive and accurate spatial land use database with overall accuracies exceeding 95% using remote sensing, statistical, and temporal analysis methods.
Agencies that use annually mapped land use data from DWR’s Land Use Program include the California Water Plan Group, where agricultural water cannot be accounted for without the land use data. Implementation of the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Office (SGMO) requires agricultural land use information and mapping provided by the DWR Land Use Program land use surveys because most groundwater models incorporate this land use information to accurately determine the amount of groundwater withdrawals and deep percolation. Additionally, the land use data has become crucial for assessing drought impacts using fallowed land acreages that result from drought and is used by the State Water Resources Control Board for water rights determinations and assessments.
Selected final data release highlights:
• DWR Land Use Program staff reviewed the provisional dataset published in April 2023 and recommended changes that were implemented by Land IQ LLC, including updating peak maturity dates of crops.
• DWR and Land IQ are now working on quantifying changes between the provisional and final WY 2021 datasets.
• New columns were added to represent a new special condition for fallow rice fields infrastructure, and to capture sub-classifications not included in the DWR Remote Sensing Land Use Legend.
• Updates were made to the metadata to reflect the new special condition for rice infrastructure and some more refined crop classes. Eucalyptus, Pecans, Sugar Beets, and Golf Courses were included while also breaking out Plums, Prunes, Apricots, Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes into their own crop classes.
Source: Statewide Crop Mapping
About this Resource
| Last updated | unknown |
|---|---|
| Created | unknown |
| Name | 2021 Statewide Crop Mapping Geodatabase |
| Format | Zip File |
| License | License not specified |
| Created | 1 year ago |
| Media type | application/zip |
| has views | False |
| id | 60ed6f33-935d-4585-b134-55d84b627f85 |
| metadata modified | 1 year ago |
| package id | d87a7f62-e44d-428a-9db4-9467e8478d0f |
| position | 5 |
| state | active |
| tracking summary | {'total': 4, 'recent': 4} |