An Overview of Agriculture Cyberinformatics Tools to Support USDA NASS Decision Making

Cyberinformatics tools have been extensively applied to aid decision support in agriculture. This paper presents an overview of cyberinformatics tools to support decision making for the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). We review three web-based applications: CropScape, VegScape, and Crop-CASMA. Specifically, we summarize the data products of the three tools, including Cropland Data Layer (CDL) products, vegetation index products based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrora-diometer (MODIS) data, and soil moisture products derived from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) data. Also, we compare the geoprocessing capability and web service support of these tools. Meanwhile, two use cases and applications are presented to demonstrate the capability of supporting USDA NASS decision making with the cyberinformatics tools.