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Abstract
Introduction: The launching of Landsat I in 1972 provided a new tool for agricultural inventories and analyses. Multispectral scanner data became available from Landsat I for extensive areas on a repetitive basis every 18 days and with the launching of Landsat II, every 9 days. The prospect of timely and relatively inexpensive data encouraged agriculturists to experiment with Landsat in their inventory efforts. This study is an example of one such effort. The objective was to inventory new cropland development between 1972 and 1976, a period of high agricultural prices, to obtain a measure of cropland response to favorable cost-price relationships. In this report, the results of the study are presented and analyzed. The limitations of Landsat imagery for projects of this nature are discussed and guidelines for future Landsat land use inventory projects are proposed.