Sep 15, 2015

You have likely heard phrases (click here) such as, “Welcome to the Anthropocene.” More and more we hear the term “anthropocene” used to describe the current epoch of our planet when humankind has had a profound impact on Earth. This month, the U.S. Geological Survey has released a report and dataset on anthropogenic land use trends in the U.S. between 1974 and 2012.

The 60-m raster datasets cover the conterminous U.S. for five time periods: 1974, 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2012. Lead author James Falcone started with the 2011 Landsat-based National Land Cover Dataset (recoded to land uses) and then mapped backward in time how those land uses had changed. The dataset focuses on how humans use the land (which correlates with the land’s economic function). These datasets were compiled using an impressively broad array of existing data sources including:

+ NLCD 2011, April 2014 version, 30 meters (m) (Jin and others, 2013) **Landsat-based**

+ USDA Census of Agriculture, 1974–2012, State and county-level data (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2014a)

+ U.S. Census 2010 hden, provided by GeoLytics Inc., block group scale (GeoLytics, 2012)

+ Spatial Analysis for Conservation and Sustainability (SILVIS) Lab housing unit density, 1970–2000, partial block group scale (Hammer and others, 2004)

+ History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE) 3.1 1970–2005 decadal cropland and pasture 9-km data (History Database of the Global Environment, 2013)...