NCRS - The Changing Midwest Assessment

The seven Midwestern States that make up the North Central Region cover more than 267 million acres. These lands are typically classified into six major land cover types: Agriculture, Forestland, Urban, Wetland, Water, and Barren.

Forestland was the second most common land cover type in the Region between 1980 and 2000, accounting for no less than 28.8 percent of the total land area. Forestland is defined as a tract of land upon which trees are the dominant cover type. As a rule of thumb, forestland has at least 25 percent canopy closure, however, under certain conditions a tract of land that is treeless can also be classified as forestland, so long as it has not been developed for nonforest use. Forestland is different than forest, which is a type of land use.

This slide show consists of a series of maps that depict how the extent and spatial distribution of land classified as forestland has changed from 1980 to 2000. Change was calculated at a resolution of 1 km using aerial photography and satellite imagery (see Bergen, Brown, Rutherford, and Gustafson, 2002).