County-Level Herbicide Use Estimates for the Conterminous United States

20 herbicide-use estimates are provided for each county polygon as acres treated, pounds of active ingredient used, and pounds used per square mile. The data originates from Gianessi and Puffer (1991) and uses cropping data from the 1987 Census of Agriculture. County boundaries and non-land features were derived from the 1970 National Atlas of the United States.

Use Cases

• Map relative rates of herbicide use across counties using the 'pounds used per square mile' attribute.
• Analyze total herbicide application intensity by comparing the 'acres treated' and 'pounds of active ingredient used' columns across regions.
• Identify counties with high herbicide use totals by aggregating the 'pounds of active ingredient used' attribute across all crops.
• Study correlations between agricultural census data and chemical use by joining county-level 'acres treated' estimates with crop acreage data.

Strengths

• Provides three distinct metrics per herbicide: acres treated, pounds of active ingredient used, and pounds per square mile.
• County-level polygons are edgematched to a tolerance of 100 meters, ensuring spatial consistency.
• Data covers the 20 most-used herbicides across the entire conterminous United States.

Limitations

• Data is based on the 1987 Census of Agriculture and a 1991 study, making it over 30 years old and potentially stale.
• County-level acreage estimates are subject to suppressions due to confidentiality rules, introducing data gaps.
• Herbicide-use estimates are totals for all crops, preventing analysis of use by specific crop type.

Provenance

Source

Gianessi and Puffer (1991) and the 1987 Census of Agriculture.

Collection Method

An automated procedure processed raw data into ARC/INFO coverage attributes via a Fortran program and AML scripts.

Time Range

1987 (crop data) and 1991 (herbicide estimates).

Geography

Conterminous United States at the county level.