Land USe

        The United States is praised for having the largest economy globally, but how much of the national land is actually being used to help support that success? There are 1.9 billion acre’s in the US. How then do we differentiate the major uses of public versus private land given regional trends. The USDA Economic Research Service is that data source that specifically tracks the patterns and breaks down the major land uses into six different comprehensive categories: grassland, forests, cropland, special uses, miscellaneous, and urban. Land use, on a national level, is highly classified based on what region you live in. The majority of natural land, such as grassland (29.00%), forests (27.95%), and cropland (17.34%) are dominated by the West and Midwest, while special uses (13.97%), miscellaneous (8.65%) and urban (3.09%) are more East and Northeast. Bloomberg, a market news and data analysis company, published the article “Here’s How America Uses Its Land,” providing a breakdown on how much of each land classification use is being utilized. A topic discussed in Bloomberg’s report was croplands. Specifically, croplands make up almost 20% of the United States, yet the US is only using a fraction of it to their economic advantage. Over the years farming has seen a drastic reduction in use of cropland; and instead of addressing the decline, the US decided to turn to neighboring countries for imports, for various reasons. The Bloomberg article gives staggering statistics stating, “Americans imported 15 percent of their food and beverage products in 2016. And more than 30 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables Americans consume come from other countries, predominantly Mexico and Canada. The amount of U.S. land used to produce citrus fruits alone is larger than Rhode Island”(Merrill & Leatherby, 2018). 

        In this study three graphs and a comprehensive legend were used to connect all of the data on a national level and in the state of Maryland. A custom interactive legend was implemented based on land use and the size of each block represents the percentage of land nationally. The measurements used were “use” and “acres” to compute the data. Grasslands have the highest national percentage at 29% and are predominantly dominated by livestock. The New York Times article “Why the Government Owns so Much Land in the US,” summarizes in the early 1900’s how the government was able to transfer land to state governments and individuals up until the West. Farmers require a certain type of terrain to be agriculturally successful and in certain states “The many mountainous, arid and difficult-to-reach tracts of land in the West simply weren’t attractive to farmers”(Bui & Katz, 2016), however, what the land was good for was grazing. The government allowed farmers to let their cattle graze at a very low cost until the Taylor Grazing Act was passed, put in place to regulate the land. Unfortunately, farmers couldn’t and still cannot afford to buy these grasslands; and it is too expensive to transfer ownership from legislation to state control. Now most grasslands are facing a standstill titled as protected lands. 

        On the first medium, the bar chart is ranking states based on the amount of land they use for specific purposes. The measurements used were acres and percent and the acres were in thousands. On the bar chart it shows high acre numbers for a lot of states in all of the categories except urban. Urban land only makes up 3.09% of the US, therefore not a dominant land use, relative to the others. In class we discussed sprawling, which is defined as “land use areas are inefficiently dispersed rather than efficiently concentrated”(Wooten, 2020). There should be less single family homes scattered across the country by having people all live in a specific section or in a condensed area such as an apartment complex. By putting people together and having multifamily homes it allows for land to be used in a more resourceful way. Maryland is a relatively small state, however 4.41% of their land use is urban while the national level is only 3.09%. This is because Maryland has many popular cities such as Baltimore and Ocean City along with neighboring, Washington D.C., attracting a lot of people to live in those condensed areas thereby causing the urban population to increase. 

       On the second medium a text table was used to show actual values of parameters without the need to hover over the dashboard. The measurements were acres and percent measured in the thousands. The total amount of acreage in each category is broken down: grasslands (655,485.76), forests (631,682.00), cropland (391,974.94), special-use (315,872.61), miscellaneous (195,541.47), and urban (69,862.75). The text table is coordinated with all of the other visualizations, allowing you to pick a land use and then that entire category on the dashboard will light up. Each land use is classified specifically by how the land is being allocated. It is then measured by the amount of acreage that is being taken up nationally within this use. 

        On the third medium, a map was used to show a visual representation of each state in the United States. The measurements were “use” and “acreage.” When a category on the custom legend is picked, a monochromatic color will appear on the map, with all different tones for each state. The darker color the state, the greater total land use makes up that area. In the state of Maryland specifically, their darkest color on the map was orange, which is correlated with forests. Maryland’s percent of total land use is 2.07%, has 2,392 acres, and ranked 39th nationally in regards to forests. Although that may seem quite low nationally, Maryland’s overall acreage is 6,212 and 2,392 of those acres are allocated to forests covering 38.5%. Unfortunately, forests are starting to disappear and population growth and economic development continue to rise in the state. Maryland relates to the east side of the nation as this is where forests are predominantly located, differing from the west where they are less dominant.