Maxar Technologies Inc.
10/25/2021 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/25/2021 11:36
Land IQ Leverages SecureWatch to Determine Land Use Change in Cal...
Land use data is critically important to the work of the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and other state, regional and local agencies as they work to implement California's first groundwater regulation, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).
Understanding the impacts of land use, crop location, acreage and management practices on environmental attributes and resource management is an integral step in implementing the SGMA. SGMA calls for locally established Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) in high- and medium-priority areas to reach sustainability within 20 years of establishing their Groundwater Sustainability Plans; this is an effort to bring groundwater basins into a balance of pumping and recharge. To meet these requirements and many others, a spatial mapping base layer is essential for reliable analysis and effective decision-making.
To develop this data, quality imagery at multiple points throughout the year is critical. Land IQ, an agricultural and environmental consultancy, integrates crop production knowledge with detailed ground truth information and multiple satellite and aerial imagery resources to conduct remote sensing land use analysis at the field scale. Maxar's SecureWatch subscription service provides instant access to a library of images that Land IQ uses in its mapping process. To support SGMA implementation, Land IQ has developed a comprehensive and accurate spatial land use database for DWR, covering more than 14.2 million acres of agricultural, urban and managed wetlands.
Historically, this land use data had been collected through periodic field surveys that identified agricultural crops and other land uses within each county. However, with existing methods, these surveys were infeasible for statewide collections. As a result, there had been no publicly available comprehensive, current data resource for accurate field-scale land use statewide. Yet with the development of SGMA, DWR was required to provide datasets for local and state agencies for informed decision-making.