The 2002 Merced County land use survey data set was developed by DWR through its Division of Planning and Local Assistance (DPLA). The data was gathered using aerial photography and extensive field visits, the land use boundaries and attributes were digitized, and the resultant data went through standard quality control procedures before finalizing. The land uses that were gathered were detailed agricultural land uses, and lesser detailed urban and native vegetation land uses. The data was gathered and digitized by staff of DWR’s San Joaquin District. Quality control procedures were performed jointly by staff at DWR’s DPLA headquarters and San Joaquin District. Important Points about Using this Data Set: 1. The land use boundaries were drawn on-screen using orthorectified imagery. They were drawn to depict observable areas of the same land use. They were not drawn to represent legal parcel (ownership) boundaries, or meant to be used as parcel boundaries. 2. If the data is to be brought into a GIS for analysis of cropped (or planted) acreage, two things must be understood: a. The acreage of each field delineated is the gross area of the field. The amount of actual planted and irrigated acreage will always be less than the gross acreage, because of ditches, farm roads, other roads, farmsteads, etc. Thus, a delineated corn field may have a GIS calculated acreage of 40 acres but will have a smaller cropped (or net) acreage, maybe 38 acres. b. Double and multicropping must be taken into account. A delineated field of 40 acres might have been cropped first with grain, then with corn, and coded as such. To estimate actual cropped acres, the two crops are added together (38 acres of grain and 38 acres of corn) which results in a total of 76 acres of net crop (or planted) acres. 3. For this survey, a new special condition attribute was created. It is “C”, for green-chop, and is only used with grain (wheat) that is green-chopped. 4. Water source information was not collected for this survey. 5. Not all land use codes will be represented in the survey.The associated data are considered DWR enterprise GIS data, which meet all appropriate requirements of the DWR Spatial Data Standards, specifically the DWR Spatial Data Standard version 3.3, dated April 13, 2022. DWR makes no warranties or guarantees - either expressed or implied - as to the completeness, accuracy, or correctness of the data. DWR neither accepts nor assumes liability arising from or for any incorrect, incomplete, or misleading subject data. See the CADWR Land User Viewer (gis.water.ca.gov/app/CADWRLandUseViewer) for the most current contact information. Comments, problems, improvements, updates, or suggestions should be forwarded to gis@water.ca.gov.