Hey everyone,
I’m Arpit, a graduate student at UNCW working on a personal research project under the guidance of my professor. My project focuses on leveraging ArcGIS Pro and REST APIs (ESRI Developed) to efficiently retrieve agricultural land cover data from the Cropland Data Layer (CDL) from this site. Since this project uses only publicly available data, there are no organizational restrictions—just a desire to automate what would otherwise be a tedious manual process.
The Goal:
I need to programmatically download GeoTIFF files from the ArcGIS REST services by specifying parameters like:
Layer: Cropland Data Layer (CDL)
State: (e.g., North Carolina)
County: (e.g., New Hanover)
Manually exporting files using the Export function in ArcGIS for every county across multiple states is simply not practical. So, I’m trying to find the right API endpoint that allows me to query and extract the required data dynamically.
The Problem:
Despite scouring the Esri Developer Guide, I haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact API endpoint or the best approach to achieve this. While I understand that the ImageServer ExportImage function might be relevant, I haven’t been able to get it to work as expected for downloading the GeoTIFFs.
What I Need Help With:
Finding the correct API endpoint that allows querying and exporting the CDL data.
Understanding how to properly structure the API request (i.e., required parameters, authentication if needed, etc.).
Any working examples or relevant documentation/tutorials that might help.
What I’ve Tried:
Exploring Esri’s REST API documentation, but I haven’t found a straightforward way to extract the specific crop data efficiently.
Checking various online forums, but most discussions focus on using ArcGIS Pro manually rather than automating the process.
Experimenting with ImageServer and FeatureServer APIs, but without clear success.
Looking for Guidance:
If anyone has experience working with ArcGIS REST APIs for spatial data extraction—especially for agricultural datasets like CDL—I’d love to hear your insights! Any advice, documentation links, or even a simple breakdown of how to approach this problem would be immensely helpful.
If needed, I’m also open to hopping on a quick call to discuss further. Thanks in advance for your time and support!
