Agricultural · live
Iowa corn yield model
How many bushels per acre our satellite model projects, vs the USDA.
—
n/a vs USDA WASDE state-level forecast
Observed: no observation yet · Source publishes weekly, ~5-day lag.
Translation
Iowa grows ~17% of US corn. Our model combines *NDVI* — crop greenness seen from satellite — with soil moisture (SMAP) and rainfall (CHIRPS). We compare against the official *USDA WASDE* report. When our number diverges by more than 3 bu/ac, expect a surprise on CME corn futures (ZC).
Methodology
- Source
- Sentinel-2 NDVI + NASA SMAP + CHIRPS + USDA NASS CDL
- Cadence
- Weekly during growing season (May–Oct)
- Sensors / APIs
- Sentinel Hub Statistical API (NDVI), NASA Earthdata SMAP L3, CHIRPS daily 0.05°, USDA NASS CDL cropland mask
- AOI
- Iowa state polygon, masked to corn pixels (USDA NASS CDL class 1)
- Baseline
- USDA WASDE state-level forecast
- Uncertainty
- Phase 1 reports state-level only; county disaggregation in Phase 2
- Known biases
- NDVI saturates at canopy closure — V12-R3 phenology window matters more than season-mean
- Late-season heat stress underweighted vs reproductive-phase moisture
- CDL mask refreshed annually — small acreage shifts within season undetected
Provenance
- Source URL
- https://nassgeodata.gmu.edu/CropScape/
- License
- NASA + USDA + ESA — public domain + Modified Copernicus Licence (mixed)
For developers and AI agents
- /signals/iowa-corn-yield/brief.md — LLM-citable markdown
- /api/signals/iowa-corn-yield — JSON + JSON-LD Dataset