County-Level Estimates of Nitrogen and Phosphorus Fertilizer Use in the United States, 1945 to 1985

USGS Open-File Report 90-130
By Richard B. Alexander and Richard A. Smith

Digital Fertilizer Use Data from Open-File Report 90-130

The data may be obtained in two forms, including ZIP archive files and ARC/INFO county coverage files.

• To download the ZIP archive files:

  (1) Change your Web browser options for downloading a data file. For example, if you are using mosaic, select OPTIONS and then click on Load To Local Disk.

  (2) Select a compressed (ZIP archive) file to copy to your hard disk (this file is a self-extracting executable file on DOS systems):

  -Nitrogen county fertilizer use (1945-85) -- zip1.exe

  -Phosphorus county fertilizer use (1945-85) --zip2.exe

  These files are approximately 750 kilobytes in size. The units of annual fertilizer use are kilograms.

  (3) Copy the documentation file, 1st-read.txt, to your hard disk. This file gives instructions for uncompressing the ZIP archive files and decribes the contents and format of the uncompressed ASCII data files. The state and county names corresponding to the state-county FIPS code identifiers are provided in the file, fips_nam.txt.

• To obtain a county ARC/INFO coverage, select the following files:

  Documentation file -- cty_fert.txt (14 kilobytes)

  Coverage export file -- Select the following file once your Web browser options are changed to download the file to hard disk (use the "COVER" option to import the file to ARC/INFO): cty_fert.e00 (5000 kilobytes)

For More Recent Nitrogen Fertilizer Use Data:

Annual nitrogen fertilizer use data are also available for 1985-91.

Citation: Battaglin, W.A. and Goolsby, D.A., 1994, U.S. Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations Report 94-4176.