SPAN: Integrated U.S. Land Cover Maps for Agriculture and Nature, 2012-2021

2012-2021 annual land cover rasters for the conterminous United States, created by merging the LANDFIRE National Vegetation Classification and USDA Cropland Data Layer. The dataset, produced by the Department of Agriculture, includes integrated maps and separate layers showing pixels where the two source datasets conflicted. The final merged product resolved a majority of conflicts, leaving only 0.6% of agricultural pixels unresolved.

Use Cases

• Modeling ecological processes based on integrated agricultural and natural land cover classes.
• Analyzing land use change over time based on annual rasters from 2012-2021.
• Validating or comparing thematic land cover datasets based on the provided conflict rasters.
• Supporting conservation planning based on detailed vegetation and crop classification.

Strengths

• Covers the conterminous United States for a 10-year time range (2012-2021).
• Integrates two major thematic datasets (LANDFIRE NVC and USDA CDL) to address a known data gap.
• Includes validation analysis showing a majority of input conflicts were resolved, with only 0.6% of agricultural pixels left unresolved.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Natural vegetation pixels represent land cover from a single year (2016), while agricultural pixels vary annually.

Provenance

Source

Department of Agriculture

Collection Method

Merged from LANDFIRE National Vegetation Classification v2.0 and USDA-NASS Cropland Data Layer.

Time Range

2012-2021

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:48:54.383461; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Conterminous United States