Tillage practices in the conterminous United States, 1989-2004: Datasets aggregated by watershed

Data Series 573
National Water-Quality Assessment ProgramPrepared in cooperation with the Conservation Technology Information Center
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Abstract

This report documents the methods used to aggregate county-level tillage practices to the 8-digit hydrologic unit (HU) watershed. The original county-level data were collected by the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC). The CTIC collects tillage data by conducting surveys about tillage systems for all counties in the United States. Tillage systems include three types of conservation tillage (no-till, ridge-till, and mulch-till), reduced tillage, and intensive tillage. Total planted acreage for each tillage practice for each crop grown is reported to the CTIC. The dataset includes total planted acreage by tillage type for selected crops (corn, cotton, grain sorghum, soybeans, fallow, forage, newly established permanent pasture, spring and fall seeded small grains, and 'other' crops) for 1989-2004. Two tabular datasets, based on the 1992 enhanced and 2001 National Land Cover Data (NLCD), are provided as part of this report and include the land-cover area-weighted interpolation and aggregation of acreage for each tillage practice in each 8-digit HU watershed in the conterminous United States for each crop. Watershed aggregations were done by overlying the 8-digit HU polygons with a raster of county boundaries and a raster of either the enhanced 1992 or the 2001 NLCD for cultivated land to derive a county/land-cover area weighting factor. The weighting factor then was applied to the county-level tillage data for the counties within each 8-digit HU and summed to yield the total acreage of each tillage type within each 8-digit HU watershed.

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Publication type Report
Publication Subtype USGS Numbered Series
Title Tillage practices in the conterminous United States, 1989-2004: Datasets aggregated by watershed
Series title Data Series
Series number 573
DOI 10.3133/ds573
Year Published 2011
Language English
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Publisher location Reston, VA
Contributing office(s) Indiana Water Science Center
Description Report: iv, 12 p.; 3 Appendices
Time Range Start 1989-01-01
Time Range End 2004-12-31
Country United States
Other Geospatial Conterminous United States
Additional Online Files (Y/N) Y
Google Analytic Metrics Metrics page
Additional publication details