Looking for NRCS conservation program data? Whether you need program financial information or number of conservation contracts, civil rights data or which practices are applied on how many acres – this and much more is available in the Soil and Water Resources Conservation Act (RCA) Data Viewer. The Viewer was recently updated with data for fiscal year 2020, and for those who want to use the numbers to create their own analysis, graphs or charts, conservation program data are now available in easier-to-use Microsoft Excel file format. The new Excel files combine data from national, state, and program reports into a handful of “flat” files that can be easily read using R, SAS, Tableau, and many other software packages. Each file includes multiple worksheets that offer statistics by program, practice, and year at the state and national level. A new file that identifies practices by land use is also available. Practices are associated with cropland, pasture, range, forest, farmsteads, and other land use/land cover categories.
Specifically, the RCA Data Viewer offers conservation program financials, contracts and easements, and civil rights data, as well as conservation practices applied (by program and fiscal year; by land use, program and fiscal year; and by conservation measure, program and fiscal year). It also contains information on land use, soil erosion, prime farmland, and wetlands based on the 2017 National Resources Inventory (NRI), available at state, regional, and national levels, an extensive collection of maps based on NRI data, and publications from the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP).