North Central Research Station

Landscape Change Integrated Program
- How is the Landscape Changing?

Intro Changing Midwest Housing Density Land Cover Ozone Dynamics

The Changing Midwest: An Atlas of Landscape Change

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a map is worth a thousand pictures.” This geographer’s adage recognizes the value maps have in revealing important spatial relationships about people and resources that are often not visible from the ground.

Maps of landscape change add another valuable dimension—a temporal one—and can thus reveal critical patterns of how our landscape is evolving over space and time by providing information about the concentration and dispersion of people and resources, rates of change, and other important clues about what is happening to the landscape in which we live.

Visualizing Patterns

NCRS researchers Rob Potts and Eric Gustafson visualized these patterns of change across the Midwest region as an important first step in developing hypotheses about the causes and consequence of development related change and investigating strategies aimed at minimizing its negative effects.

Working as part of an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the natural and social sciences, they developed a set of maps showing key aspects of change in four broad sections of interest across the seven-State Midwest region.

1. Land Cover—describes changes in the amount and distribution of the major land cover types in the region (i.e., Agriculture, Forestland, and Urban).

2. Forest Characteristics—provides a comprehensive account of change in forests by forest type group, including change in area, volume, structure, composition, and ownership

3. Plants and Animals—describes change in the relative abundance of species of special concern.

4. Human Demographics—describes change in population, housing and seasonal housing density, and personal income.

More Information

Larger Images:
Link to larger image of maps shown on this page:Map showing change in the volume of all growing-stock trees

Station contacts: Eric J. Gustafson, Robert S. Potts

Publications & Links:

Changing Midwest Assessment - Interactive Mapping Server application

The Changing Midwest: An Atlas of Landscape Change

Potts, Robert; Gustafson, Eric; Stewart, Susan I.; Thompson, Frank R.; Bergen, Kathleen; Brown, Daniel G.; Hammer, Roger; Radeloff, Volker; Bengston, David; Sauer, John; Sturtevant, Brian. 2004. The Changing Midwest Assessment: land cover, natural resources, and people. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-250. St. Paul, MN: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central Research Station. 87 p.

USDA Forest Service - North Central Research Station
Last Modified: Friday, 16 January 2004