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    • Monarch Butterfly Relevant Land Cover Data Set for the Conterminous United States of America

    Metadata Updated: January 20, 2026

    The USGS Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center developed a Monarch Butterfly Relevant Land Cover data set covering the conterminous United States of America. This data set was used primarily to assist in forecasting the number of milkweed stems on the landscape. Milkweed are required by monarch butterflies for reproduction and one possible cause for the decline in monarch butterfly numbers is thought to be the loss of milkweed. We used the Cropland Data Layer 2015 as well as additional spatially explicit information to develop the monarch relevant land cover data set. Additional sources of information included 2014 United States Department of Agriculture Conservation Reserve Program enrollment locations; railroad, power line, and road rights of way; marginal versus productive farmland as determined by the 2012 United States Department of Agriculture National Commodity Cropland Productivity Index; and a characterization of urban versus outside urban environs. Due to the inherent sensitivity of the Conservation Reserve Program and Transmission line data sets, we created this non-sensitive version of the Monarch Butterfly Relevant Land Cover data set for distribution with those two data sets not used in the development.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date January 11, 2026
    Metadata Updated Date January 20, 2026

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date January 11, 2026
    Metadata Updated Date January 20, 2026
    Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
    Maintainer
    Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/USGS_5cd5c954e4b0e8a309e462a7
    Data Last Modified 2022-06-16T00:00:00Z
    Category geospatial
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 010:12
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Datagov Dedupe Retained 20260120105240
    Harvest Object Id 73025911-2f79-4cd1-944a-628fb989be45
    Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
    Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
    Metadata Type geospatial
    Old Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -127.8872, 22.9403, -127.8872, 51.5758, -65.3455, 51.5758, -65.3455, 22.9403, -127.8872, 22.9403}
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 68204a17726c57fae4c67fdb5e40c07236a7b8560037573d0ffe9975f5d5a467
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -127.8872, 22.9403, -127.8872, 51.5758, -65.3455, 51.5758, -65.3455, 22.9403, -127.8872, 22.9403}

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