Operational Tillage Information System (OpTIS) tillage, residue, and soil health practice dataset

CTIC has partnered with Applied GeoSolutions and The Nature Conservancy on the development, testing and application of the Operational Tillage Information System (OpTIS), an automated system to map tillage, residue cover, winter cover, and soil health practices using remote sensing data. While OpTIS calculations are performed at the farm-field scale using publicly available data, the privacy of individual producers is fully protected by reporting only spatially-aggregated results at regional and watershed scales. OpTIS-based data are currently available for the years 2005 through 2018 for the US Corn Belt, including all of Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa, as well as parts of: Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

The Operational Tillage Information System (OpTIS) has been developed by Applied GeoSolutions (AGS) and the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) as a method for the automated use of remote sensing (satellite-based) data to monitor conservation practices in agricultural systems, including various forms of reduced tillage and the planting of winter cover crops. While the OpTIS calculations are performed and validated at the farm-field scale, the privacy of individual producers is fully protected by distributing only spatially-aggregated results – at the county and watershed (8-digit HUC) scale.

• Resource Title: Operational Tillage Information System (OpTIS) API.

  File Name: Web Page, url: https://ctic.org/OpTIS

  OpTIS reports tillage practices using the following categories: Total Planted Area - Total area planted of indicated crops within the spatial unit (HUC8 or CRD) according to the previous year’s Cropland Data Layer map. No-Till - Area/Percentage of indicated crops within the spatial unit that were not tilled prior to planting the next crop (this corresponds to a residue cover of >30% for all crops other than corn, for which the residue cover is >50%). Reduced Tillage - Area/Percentage of indicated crops within the spatial unit that had a form of reduced tillage prior to planting the next crop (this corresponds to a residue cover of 16-30% for all crops other than corn, for which there is a reduced tillage category with a high residue of 31-50%). Conventional Tillage - Area/Percentage of indicated crops within the spatial unit that were conventionally tilled prior to planting the next crop (residue cover 0-15%).