UFFDA Developer API

crop_history

8 years of USDA NASS Cropland Data Layer (CDL). Annual crop classification at 30m resolution, CONUS only. Per-year value_label (e.g., "Corn", "Soybeans") plus a class-accuracy figure (~92% for US corn/soy from CDL metadata; lower for minor crops). Fields outside CONUS get a null value and a note in properties.errors.

soil

SSURGO as primary for CONUS fields (survey-grade, area-weighted over map units intersecting your polygon); SoilGrids 2.0 as companion (global model estimate, 16-point grid sample, native Q0.05/Q0.95 uncertainty band). Outside CONUS, SoilGrids is primary. Metrics: organic carbon, pH, clay, sand, silt, CEC, nitrogen, bulk density — all at multiple depths. The units block explicitly carries any SOM↔SOC conversion applied.

Latency note (CONUS): the first call for a field returns SSURGO in ~1–3 s with soilgrids absent — the SoilGrids companion is computed on demand and cached. A second call for the same field triggers that compute (~5–15 s) and returns the full companion; subsequent calls are instant from cache. Check stats.soilgrids directly to know whether the companion is present — do not rely on the fromCache flag for this (it reflects the SSURGO portion only). Outside CONUS, SoilGrids is computed on the first call and this two-step pattern does not apply.

companion_state — reading hydration status: the soil block carries a companion_state field on CONUS responses so you can tell apart "still hydrating" from "ready" without inspecting the companion object itself.

// CONUS, first call (cold) — SoilGrids not yet computed:
{ "companion": null, "companion_state": "pending" }

// CONUS, hydrated — companion is fully populated:
{ "companion": { /* SoilGrids values */ }, "companion_state": null }

// Outside CONUS — SoilGrids is primary; companion concept doesn't apply:
{ /* no companion_state key */ }

drought

US Drought Monitor, current week. The value_label reads like "D2 — Severe Drought". CONUS only.

land_cover

ESA WorldCover 2021 at 10m. Dominant class + proportions of others. The confidence.pct_in_class field tells you how much of your polygon was in the dominant class.

weather

NASA POWER daily at the polygon centroid, summarized over your requested window (default: trailing 12 months). Summary metrics: GDD total, precipitation total, average high and low temperature. The units block declares base and conversion for each.

MRV field enrollment#

You have farmer-supplied polygons and need to qualify fields for a carbon program. POST the collection, pull crop_history and soil, and filter by crop rotation and SSURGO organic matter. The per-year CDL history and the SSURGO–SoilGrids soil comparison are both in the response without a second call.

Gap-filling during verification#

Your primary data source has gaps — a field with no farmer-reported crop history for a given year, or missing soil measurements. The CDL and SoilGrids values in the envelope are labeled with source, vintage, and confidence, so you can use them as fill-ins and document exactly what you filled with.

Batch enrollment at scale#

v1 is sync, 25 fields per call. For a large enrollment run, loop your collection in batches of 25 and parallelize up to your rate-limit ceiling. The request_id on each response is your audit handle if something goes wrong mid-batch.

Disclaimer (paste-ready):

Informational only — not legal advice and not a warranty. License and provenance fields are UFFDA's best-effort plain-language reading of upstream metadata. Verify license terms against the upstream source before relying on them for compliance, contract, or legal claims.

Attribution:

Each layer's license.attribution field carries the suggested attribution string for that upstream source, ready to drop into a credits block. For the endpoint itself:

Data enrichment via UFFDA API (uffda.ag). Underlying datasets: USDA NASS CDL (public domain), USDA SSURGO (public domain), ISRIC SoilGrids 2.0 (CC-BY-4.0), US Drought Monitor, ESA WorldCover 2021, NASA POWER.