This table provides metadata for the actual indicator available from US statistics closest to the corresponding global SDG indicator. Please note that even when the global SDG indicator is fully available from US statistics, this table should be consulted for information on national methodology and other US-specific metadata information.
| Actual indicator available | Irrigation by Estimated Quantity of Water Applied to farm land |
|---|---|
| Actual indicator available - description | Total Farms, Acres Irrigated, Acre-feet of water applied |
| Date of national source publication | November 2014 |
| Method of computation | National surveys are structured in 4 components: policies, institutions, management tools, and financing. Within each component there are questions with defined response options giving scores of 0- 100. Questions scores are aggregated to the component level, and each component score is equally weighted to give an aggregated indicator score of 0-100. The method builds on official UN IWRM status reporting, from 2008 and 2012, of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation from the UN World Summit for Sustainable Development (1992). |
| Periodicity | Every five years |
| Scheduled update by national source | |
| U.S. method of computation | National Agricultural Statistics Service: Data are derived from the Farm and Ranch Irrigation Survey (FRIS) sampled from the Census of Agriculture irrigation data. Farm definition: A farm is any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the census or survey year. Acre-feet of water: An acre-foot of water is the quantity of water required to cover one acre to a depth of one foot. This is equivalent to 43,560 cubic feet or 325,851 gallons. Acres irrigated: Acres or area irrigated are the acres of agricultural land to which water was applied by any artificial or controlled means such as sprinklers, flooding, furrows, ditches, gated pipe, hand watered, capillary mats, trough irrigation, ebb-and-flood irrigation, sub-irrigation, and spreader dikes including pre-planted, partial, and supplemental irrigation. Land flooded was to be included as irrigated only if the water was diverted to agricultural land by dams, canals, or other works. |
| Comments and limitations | All Years: Excluded from these data are institutional, research, and experimental operations. Data are strictly for water used for irrigation on farm land only. 2008: Data does not include non-horticultural land use for horticultural operations. 2003: Data contains horticultural operations which reported $10,000 or less in sales. Horticultural operations with $10,000 or more in sales were not included. The U.S. Geological Survey conducts a water resource census every five years which includes all water use within the country http://water.usgs.gov/watercensus/ there is also a water use website http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/ |
| Date metadata updated | |
| Disaggregation geography | National, by State and Water Resources Regions |
| Unit of measurement | Acre-feet of water |
| Disaggregation categories | |
| International and national references | |
| Time period | Conducted every five years. Referenced time period is the previous calendar year. Data collection period was five months. |
| Scheduled update by SDG team | November 2019 |