Location: Range Management Research
Project Number: 3050-21600-001-117-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Jun 10, 2024
End Date: Aug 31, 2030
Objective:
The objectives below directly support IRA Action Area 6. Research will be coordinated as appropriate with aligned efforts on Action Area 6 in Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).
1. Conduct research to develop cover crop and/or tillage mapping products, derived from remote sensing, that have the potential to become operational USDA products for internal use and public release.
2. Assess the availability and impact of conservation related water management data and mapping products, such as rice cultivation, irrigation, and tile drainage.
3. Assess the availability and impact of conservation related land cover data and mapping products such as riparian buffers, edge of field treatments (e.g. filter strips, windbreaks, grassed waterways), and/or agro-forestry.
4. Through assessment of existing methods and advancement of methods of additional practices, ARS scientists will contribute to the incorporation of remotely sensed data, where possible, in in the USDA Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Assessment program and the USDA Conservation Data series.
Approach:
Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Quantification Action Area #6 approach will align work around several objectives to meet the previously described goals. Key to these efforts is building an Interagency Conservation Practices Data Team, comprising staff across four USDA agencies (ERS, NASS, ARS, and NRCS). The Conservation Practices Data Team will review the key data sources available for conservation practice and GHG-related data, develop proposals for data sources and data series to be developed, and test new methodologies that integrate near-surface remote sensing time series data to provide independent metrics to verify conservation data series, work to align questions across USDA surveys to ensure data are collected, improve survey data availability for livestock GHG-related practices (which is important for capturing emissions from diverse sectors, such as cow-calf, beef feedlots, and dairies—as well as the relative importance of different types and sectors of agricultural production across the U.S.), and produce and publish an annual data series. To employ current methodologies for data analysis and data integration, the Action Area is also establishing a shared, secure high computing environment called the USDA IRA Conservation Data Team Enclave in the REE CIPSEA Azure Cloud as well as utilizing Google Earth Engine and the Google Cloud Platform.
