Search this site:

Land Markets

Primary Question (chapter 6): How have land uses changed in the South, and how might changes in the future affect the area of forests?

Related Question (chapter 20): What are the history, status, and likely future of forested wetlands in the South?

Private land dominates the southern landscape, and land use is determined by the decisions of individuals and firms as they attempt to put land to profitable and satisfying uses. Land use has changed substantially over the past three centuries, and it continues to change. In many areas, extensive agriculture gave way to forest succession beginning in the early part of the 20^th century. Today, rapid economic and population growth are fueling urbanization and low-density residential development in many parts of the South. Where urban land uses do not dominate, rural land may switch between agriculture and forest cover depending on the prices paid for agriculture and timber products. Historical patterns reveal that some forests are cleared as agricultural prices increase, and marginal cropland and pasture are planted in forest cover as agricultural prices fall.

Our analysis of historical land use change found that:

• In the period following European settlement (1780 to 1930), land clearing for agriculture and timber production completely restructured southern ecosystems. Legacies of these massive alterations still influence forest structure, many forest functions, and aquatic systems. For example, severe soil erosion and sedimentation of waterways strongly altered and continue to influence aquatic habitat and species, especially mussel and fish species.

• Land clearing for agriculture greatly diminished the area of forested wetlands in the South. In the Mississippi River Valley, for example, more than 80 percent of bottomland forests has been converted to agriculture since European settlement (chapter 20).

We analyzed more recent land use changes and the factors that drive them (chapter 6) and found that:

• There has been essentially no net change of total forest land area since the 1970s (fig. 5), and current forest area equals about 91 percent of that recorded in 1907. However, this stability at the regional level is the result of large offsetting subregional changes: much forest has been converted to urban and agricultural uses, and agricultural land has been converted to forests through natural reseeding and tree planting.

Figure 5-- Land use shares by type for Southern States, 1945 to 1992 (note that Texas and Oklahoma are not included) Source: SOCIO-1 Figure 1.

• The rate at which rural land (both forest and agricultural) has been developed for urban and industrial uses in the 13 Southern States increased from about 667,000 acres per year between 1982 and 1992 to about 1.1 million acres per year between 1992 and 1997. Urbanization is forecast to continue at the rate of 1.1 million acres per year through the year 2020. The source of land for new urban uses is both agricultural and forest land.

• According to forecasting models described in chapter 6, the South could lose about 12 million forest acres (about 8 percent of forest land) to urbanization between 1992 and 2020. These losses are forecast to be concentrated in a few places: the Piedmont and Mountain areas of North Carolina, adjacent Piedmont areas of South Carolina and Georgia, forested areas of northern Florida including the Panhandle, and the Atlantic and Gulf coastal areas. Smaller areas with high rates of loss would include the forests around the cities of Nashville and Birmingham and in northern Virginia between Washington and Richmond (fig. 6). An additional 19 million acres of forest are forecast to be developed between 2020 and 2040.

• Forecasts indicate that agricultural land will continue to be converted to forest in other parts of the South as rising timber prices encourage tree planting. Forest gains from these sources are projected to be about 10 million acres between 1992 and 2020. Total forest area is forecast to increase in the Coastal Plain of southwestern Georgia and in a small area centered on the border between eastern North Carolina and Virginia. The largest area of potential forest gains however, is in the lower Gulf Coastal Plain, including large portions of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana (fig. 6). An additional 15 million acres of agricultural land are forecast to be planted to forest between 2020 and 2040. The net result of these changes is a westward shift in forest distribution. Note that these shifts out of agricultural uses and toward forestry would not logically arise if timber prices were not to rise relative to agricultural prices.