Neat maps. I can tell you for a fact that a significant amount of what they're calling pastureland is areas like desert scrub that would make lousy pasture but in a few spots. It's BLM land open for pasture, but I'd like to see that broken down into permitted out land and unused 'pasture'.
This reminds me of one of the first full-time jobs I ever had, writing environmental impact statements. Most of the time I was there we were trying to find a suitable site for a coal-fired power plant. We made lots of maps of large parts of Mississippi and Alabama, identifying 10-15 factors such as historical sites, access to worker pools, slope, proximity to railroads for coal supply, cooling water sources, endangered species, and so on, and of course including existing land use. Our informal approach was to call anything 0-3% of slope agricultural, 3-10% pasture, and 10%+ forest. I enjoyed that job. We drove all over those two states noting what grew where, and collecting county agricultural soil maps at each county seat. It was the first time I realized--having grown up in suburbs where this kind of thing is obscured--that deciduous trees cluster in the riverbeds while conifers dominate the higher ground.
Neat maps. I can tell you for a fact that a significant amount of what they're calling pastureland is areas like desert scrub that would make lousy pasture but in a few spots. It's BLM land open for pasture, but I'd like to see that broken down into permitted out land and unused 'pasture'.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of one of the first full-time jobs I ever had, writing environmental impact statements. Most of the time I was there we were trying to find a suitable site for a coal-fired power plant. We made lots of maps of large parts of Mississippi and Alabama, identifying 10-15 factors such as historical sites, access to worker pools, slope, proximity to railroads for coal supply, cooling water sources, endangered species, and so on, and of course including existing land use. Our informal approach was to call anything 0-3% of slope agricultural, 3-10% pasture, and 10%+ forest. I enjoyed that job. We drove all over those two states noting what grew where, and collecting county agricultural soil maps at each county seat. It was the first time I realized--having grown up in suburbs where this kind of thing is obscured--that deciduous trees cluster in the riverbeds while conifers dominate the higher ground.
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