Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

This site is currently in beta, and your feedback is helping shape its ongoing development.

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Irrigated Agriculture Datasets for the Conterminous United States (MIrAD-US)

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2020-08-18T00:00:00Z
NASS USDA estimates the irrigated croplands at county level every five years. But this estimation does not provide the geospatial information of the irrigated croplands. To provide a comprehensive, consistent, and timely geospatially detailed information about irrigated cropland conterminous U.S. (CONUS), the “Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Irrigated Agriculture Dataset for the United States (MIrAD-US)” product was produced by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center with funding from several USGS programs (National Land Imaging and National Water-Quality Assessment). A primary objective was to identify, and map irrigated agricultural areas to factor into water quality studies and drought monitoring investigations. This product uses three primary data inputs, (a) USDA county-level irrigation area statistics for 2002, (b) annual peak eMODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), and (c) a land cover mask for agricultural lands derived from NLCD to map the spatial distribution of irrigated lands across the conterminous United States. The MIrAD Version 4 offers the datasets for the years 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017 at 250-m and 1-km spatial resolutions. The validation of MIrAD-US is a challenge because no other single-source current datasets are available at a national scale for comparison. Thus, this dataset should be considered provisional until a formal accuracy assessment can be completed. The product update is planned for every 5 years, synchronized with the update of the Census of Agriculture by the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) but contingent upon availability of Collection 6 (C6) Aqua eMODIS data and funding.

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov