Waltzing with Bears

Here is the start of what I think could be a larger project on visualizing livestock farming operations in the US. Most of the area outside of Greeley, CO where this map begins is primarily cattle.

Try zooming in on the highlighted areas for a closer view of what one of these farms looks like.

A few things stood out to me in highlighting obvious satellite images of these feed lots.

• They are mostly distinguished by dark brown patches contained by square fences amid larger sections of green.
• Satellite credits are given to the Digital Globe Geoeye, USDA Farm Service, which I believe that the USDA licenses this information from Digital Globe and is also sharing this imagery with Google.
• There was only one very large operation in this section that I surveyed which also had the highest concentrations of cattle in each smaller pen.
• The smaller operations tended to have lesser concentrations of cattle.

Not sure what the next steps would be after compiling this information other than generating an inventory of livestock farming in a particular area. What kind of changes can be measured?