Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2017

Major Uses of Land in the United States, 2017

by Clayton P. Winters-Michaud, Alfredo Haro, Scott Callahan, and Daniel Bigelow

The United States has a total land area of 2.26 billion acres. In 2017, the major uses of land were grassland pasture and rangeland at 659 million acres (29 percent of the U.S. total), forest-use land at 622 million acres (28 percent), cropland at 390 million acres (17 percent), special uses (primarily parks and wildlife areas) at 318 million acres (14 percent), miscellaneous other uses (such as wetlands, tundra, and unproductive woodlands) at 197 million acres (9 percent), and urban land at 74 million acres (3 percent). This study presents findings from the most recent (2017) inventory of U.S. major land uses, drawing on data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of the Interior, and various other sources. The data sources are collected for each State to estimate the use of several broad classes and subclasses of agricultural and nonagricultural land over time. National and regional trends in land use are discussed using earlier major land-use estimates.

Keywords: Land use, land use change, agricultural land, nonagricultural land, cropland, forest-use land, forestland, pasture, rangeland, urban land

In this publication...

• Entire Report
• Report summary