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Regional land-cover conversion in the U.S. upper Midwest: magnitude of change and limited recovery (1850–1935–1993)

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Abstract

Land-use legacies can persist for hundreds to thousands of years, influencing plant species composition, nutrient cycling, water flows, and climate. To understand how land use has affected regional land-cover composition in Wisconsin (USA), we assessed the magnitude and direction of change in land cover between: (1) c.1850, at the onset of Euro-American settlement; (2) c.1935, the period of maximum clearing for agriculture following widespread forest logging; and (3) 1993, which, especially in northern Wisconsin, follows farm abandonment and forest recovery. We derived land-cover maps using U.S. Public Land Survey records (c.1850), the Wisconsin Land Economic Inventory (c.1935), and Landsat TM satellite data (1993). We stratified Wisconsin (145,000 km2) into two ecological provinces and used spatial error models, multinomial logistic regression, and non-metric multi-dimensional scaling ordination to examine change. Between 1850 and 1935, forest cover in the North declined from 84% to 56%, cropland increased to 24%, and mixed/coniferous forests and savannas were replaced by deciduous forests. In the South, formerly dominant savannas (69%) and prairies (6%) were mostly converted to cropland (51%) and pasture (11%). Remnant deciduous savannas and coniferous forests and savannas were replaced by deciduous forests. Remarkably little recovery to pre-settlement land-cover classes occurred from 1935 to 1993. Less cropland was abandoned than expected, and there was little net gain in coniferous/mixed forest. Based on these general land-cover classes, current cover is significantly different from that in 1850, but not from that in 1935, and thus continues to reflect historical logging and agricultural patterns. These results provide a historical framework for measuring associated changes in ecosystem function and can be used to guide restoration where desirable and feasible.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to George Allez, Joshua Grice, Katherine Hannon, Amy Hill, Courtney Klaus, Ike Mladenoff, and Kathryn Peterson for assistance with historical data entry; to Bill Cronon, Ken Frazier, and staff at the Wisconsin Historical Society for facilitating use of the Wisconsin Land Economic Inventory data; to Ted Sickley for technical assistance; and to Navin Ramankutty, Volker Radeloff, Monica Turner, Tom Gower, Bill Cronon, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on drafts of this manuscript. Funding was provided by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources under the Pittman-Robertson program, the USDA Forest Service North Central Research Station, and an NSERC post-graduate fellowship to JMR.

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  1. Jeanine M. Rhemtulla

    Present address: Department of Geography, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, H3A 2K6

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Ecology and Management, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Jeanine M. Rhemtulla & David J. Mladenoff

  2. Departments of Plant Pathology and Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Murray K. Clayton

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  1. Jeanine M. Rhemtulla
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Correspondence to Jeanine M. Rhemtulla.

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Rhemtulla, J.M., Mladenoff, D.J. & Clayton, M.K. Regional land-cover conversion in the U.S. upper Midwest: magnitude of change and limited recovery (1850–1935–1993). Landscape Ecol 22 (Suppl 1), 57–75 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-007-9117-3

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