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A new Major Land Use report from the USDA’s Economic Research Service shows changes in U.S land use through 2007, reflecting loss of crop acres, relatively steady rangeland acres and continued, but slowing rural sprawl.
The agency has collected and reported land-use data since 1945, publishing reports every five years in conjunction with the Census of Agriculture. This new report covers the time period from 2002 through 2007, so some potentially significant trends since 2007, such as a shift of acreage into crop production in response to high grain prices are not reflected in the data. It provides, however, an interesting glimpse of the distribution of land types in the United States and trends in its use.
Total land area in the United States, according to the report, is nearly 2.3 billion acres. Nearly 60 percent of the land in the United States is privately owned. The Federal Government owns 29 percent, or 653 million acres, over a third of which is in Alaska. State and local governments own about 9 percent or 198 million acres.
Among the major land uses in 2007, forest use accounted for 30 percent, or 671 million acres. Grassland pasture and range, at 614 million acres, accounted for 27 percent while cropland accounted for 408 million acres and 18 percent of the total. Other categories include special uses such as parks and preserves at 313 million acres (14 percent), miscellaneous uses at 197 million acres (9 percent) and urban land at 61 million or 3 percent.
Significant trends covered in the report include:
- Total cropland increased in the late 1940s, declined from 1949 to 1964, increased from 1964 to 1978, and decreased again from 1978 to 2007.
- Between 2002 and 2007, total cropland decreased by 34 million acres to its lowest level since this series began in 1945.
- Harvested cropland increased 5 million acres due to a recovery of failed cropland from severe droughts in 2002.
- A big piece of the lost cropland was a 26-million-acre decline in cropland pasture, however, a change in the way the Census of Agriculture classifies land shifted some of this acreage into permanent grassland pasture and range.
- The estimate for grassland pasture and range increased by 27 million acres, or almost 5 percent, but almost all of that increase resulted from the reclassified acres taken from the cropland total.
- Based on acreage for all grazing land, land available for grazing declined from 783 million acres in 2002 to 777 million acres in 2007, continuing a downward trend since the 1940s.
- Forest-use land in 2007, including 127 million acres of grazed forests but excluding an estimated 80 million forest acres in parks, wildlife areas, and other special uses, increased 20 million acres or 3 percent from 2002 to 2007.
- The 14-percent decline in forest-use land between 1949 and 2002 was largely due to forest-use land reclassified to special-use areas.
- Urban land acreage quadrupled from 1945 to 2007, increasing at about twice the rate of population growth. Land in urban areas was estimated at 61 million acres in 2007, up almost 2 percent since 2002 and 17 percent since 1990.
- Urban expansion has slowed however, increasing by almost 8 million acres or 13 percent during the 1990 compared with 9 million acres or 18 percent during over the 1980s and 13 million acres or 37 percent over the 1970s.
- Rural sprawl also continued during this period, but at a slower pace. Estimated rural residential acreage outside urban areas increased by 9 million acres between 2002 and 2007 to total 103 million acres. This 10-percent increase is about a third of the 21-million-acre or 29-percent increase over the previous 5-year period, reflecting the downturn in the residential housing market that occurred during the mid 2000s.
- Over all 50 States, special-use areas have increased nearly threefold since 1959, including a fourfold increase in rural parks and fish and wildlife areas. Over 2002 through 2007, special-use areas increased more than 16 million acres or 6 percent.
A report summary and the full report are available online from USDA/ERS.
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