Info technology has made land use data fun

Dave Merrill and Lauren Leatherby wrote a wonderful article at Bloomberg with a set of maps showing land use in the USA. They did a great job of taking public datasets and displaying the information in a fun way that helps answer all sorts of questions. For example, for people interested in questions about whether we will run out of food, it helps answer the question of whether the US would be able to grow enough food if our population doubled? Absolutely. The US has more land devoted to exporting food than to growing the food that we consume directly.

And more land is devoted to feeding livestock, 41% in total, than to any other purpose in the US.

It also shows that the US has more land in military bases than in state parks:

As you might expect, “According to The Land Report magazine, since 2008 the amount of land owned by the 100 largest private landowners has grown from 28 million acres to 40 million, an area larger than the state of Florida.”

See the whole article for more glorious maps.

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