New Cropland on Former Rangeland and Lost Cropland from Urban Development: The “Replacement Land” Debate

Abstract

In this study, a land use/land cover change analysis method was developed to examine patterns of land use/land cover conversions of cropland to urban uses and conversions of rangeland to cropland uses in the United States (US) Midwest region. We used the US 2001 and 2006 National Land Cover Datasets (NLCD) for our spatial analyses of these conversion trends. Our analysis showed that the eastern part of the Midwest, like prior periods, continued to experience losses of cropland to urban expansion but at a much more rapid rate, as this was during an expansion phase of the US real estate construction cycle. The period showed a very small net loss of cropland as the loss was being balanced by gains in cropland at the expense of rangeland lost in the western part of the Midwest. We refer to this rangeland to cropland conversion as "replacement land". We do not suggest by replacement that there is a signal in the system that interconnects the loss of a hectare of cropland to urban land by converting a hectare of rangeland to cropland, rather we highlight this spatial trend as it raises concerns about the environmental sustainability of agriculture in the western part of the region, as production is dependent on the use of irrigation and the already stressed High Plains aquifer.

Accelerated Conversion of Native Prairie to Cropland in Minnesota

“…Expansion of developed land was not the leading direct cause of grassland conversion, but it may pose a significant threat to grasslands and prairies by displacing existing croplands and thereby potentially elevating demand for new croplands in other locations (Greene & Stager 2001, Livanis et al 2006). Although a one-to-one replacement ratio between lost and new cropland does not exist due to variations and improvements in yields as well as broader economic and land response elasticities, the conversion of cropland to urban and developed land may create pressures for lost cropland area to be made up elsewhere through local activity, as well as by market-mediated influences (Coisnon et al 2014, Emili & Greene, 2014). However, more research is needed in order to better understand the potential indirect land-use change effects of development on grassland and prairie conversion.…”

Recent Land Use Change to Agriculture in the U.S. Lake States: Impacts on Cellulosic Biomass Potential and Natural Lands

“…While land cover transitions necessarily refer to a starting and ending land cover for a specific time period, we also observed land replacements [ 49 ] in southern Michigan. Here, land cover change from agricultural lands to developed lands (11x10 3 ha) is more than offset by a conversion of 57x10 3 ha of open lands to agricultural lands ( Fig 5A ).…”

“…To identify detailed patterns of land cover change, we used transition diagrams to track the “to and from” changes of each individual pixel [ 28 , 30 ]. Transition diagrams show the complicated pathways that can exist on a changing landscape, and can therefore help identify potential direct land cover change effects [ 49 ]. We summarized the data as the net change of a class by taking the difference of the ‘from and to’ changes in order to account for crop rotations (such as corn and soy) (after [ 24 ]).…”

Assessing Landscape Change and Processes of Recurrence, Replacement, and Recovery in the Southeastern Coastal Plains, USA

“…New agricultural development replaced forest and other land covers in various SECP landscapes, even as agriculture declined overall. Some of this land-cover replacement could be the result of agricultural displacement from elsewhere in the region (Emili and Greene 2014 ), suggested by concomitant agricultural losses to urban and plantation forestry during the study period, or it could be part of a typical pattern of fluctuation that results from many different individuals making site-specific decisions.…”

“…New approaches are needed to improve the understanding of human influence across broad spatial scales (Sanderson et al 2002 ; Woolmer et al 2008 ; Verburg et al 2013 ). At the same time, there is a need to develop a more complete understanding of the different landscape-change processes beyond a strict focus on the gains and losses among major land-cover types (Velázquez et al 2003 ; Lasanta and Vicente-Serrano 2012 ; Emili and Greene 2014 ). Here, we work toward these goals by developing and implementing an approach to investigate proximate land-use causes and natural disturbances across 16 landscape-scale ecoregions (USEPA 2013 ) within the high-change Southeastern Coastal Plains region (SECP; Fig.…”