USA Major Land Uses

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USA Major Land Uses

• What are the special characteristics of land?
• Fixed location
• Finite
• Diverse
• Biological
• Expensive
• Large quantities
• High transfer costs
• Infrequent turnover
• Legal restrictions and rights
• Is land a resource or a commodity? Which of the
  above characteristics are relevant to each
  concept? Classify.

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USA Major Land Uses
Contrasting theories of nature
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USA Major Land Uses
Land uses issues by location rural vs. urban.
Add the relevant adjectives in each of the
cells.
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USA Major Land Uses
Land use conflicts vary with scale. Merchant vs.
merchant, e.g., location of bus stop Merchants
vs. homeowners location of public parking or
playground Neighborhood vs. Neighborhood
location of new junior high school City vs.
cities/counties location of new shopping mall or
industries State vs. state location of military
base, nuclear waste dump Country(ies) vs.
country(ies) trade policies, etc.
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USA Land Grants
Excludes Alaska. Source www.blm.gov/natacq/pls02/
pls1-2_02.pdf
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USA Major Land Uses
The contiguous 48 states cover nearly 1.9 billion
acres. The majority of this area (74 percent)
is in nonfederal, rural land uses -- nearly 1.4
billion acres, which is composed of rangeland,
forest land, cropland, pastureland, other rural
land. A subset of these lands is defined as
prime farmland -- those lands with the best
combination of physical and chemical
characteristics for producing food, fiber,
and oilseeds. In 2001, there were about 330
million acres of prime farmland (24) in the
contiguous United States.
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USA Major Land Uses
The Economic Research Service of the US Dept. of
Agriculture classifies counties into several
types, depending on their economies.
Link to their web site for maps by individual
states.
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USA Major Land Uses

• Counties are classified into urban types.
• Link to the ERS web site change the scale of this
  map.

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USA Major Land Uses

• The rural-urban continuum in the USA by county.
• Link to the ERS web site change the scale of this
  map.

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USA Major Land Uses
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USA Major Land Uses
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USA Major Land Uses

• Reasons for buying land
• Agricultural production food and fiber
• Recreational uses lakeshores, ski huts, hobby
  farms and ranches
• Hedge against inflation 1950-1980 average land
  prices rose 900 percent
• Tax dodge capital gain taxes have historically
  been lower than income tax brackets (commonly by
  50)
• The trend to buy rural land for recreational uses
  has resulted in land divisions. Over 20 million
  acres are now owned in parcel sizes smaller than
  50 acres. Parcellation severely limits future
  commodity production on these lands.