This interactive web map provides access to geospatial data produced by the Gibbs Land Use and Environment Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For more information, visit the website or contact Dr. Tyler Lark at lark@wisc.edu.

Navigation

Click or touch the map to navigate. Zoom capabilities are activated via mouse scroll, touchscreen pinch, or the +/- buttons in the top right corn of the screen.

Base Maps

Different background data are selectable from the control panel box located in the upper-left corner of the screen.

Data Layers

Individual data layers can be turned on or off by toggling each corresponding switch in the control panel. Layers are organized roughly by broad projects.

• Click for more info on how each data layer was created or defined. Select Download datasets within each info box to access associated spatial file(s) where available.
• Use the slider to adjust the display transparency of each data layer.

This application and materials are based upon work supported by various funders including the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research under Award Number DE-SC0018409, the United States Geological Survey under Award Number G19AC00080, the National Wildlife Federation, and others. See each specific dataset and associated publication for details.

From Lark et al (2020) Cropland expansion in the United States produces marginal yields at high costs to wildlife. Nature Communications.

broad land use change

Layer indicating the top-level classification of land during the 2008-16 study period as one of the following 5 categories:

1. Stable non-cropland -- areas of consistent non-cropland throughout the duration of the study period
2. Stable cropland -- areas of consistent cropland throughout the duration of the study period.
3. Cropland expansion -- areas converted to crop production between 2008 and 2016.
4. Cropland abandonment -- areas converted away from crop production between 2008 and 2016.
5. Intermittent cropland/confusion -- areas that were cropped for at least two years but show no clear trend towards or away from cropland. These could include areas under a crop-pasture rotation, fallow rotations, or simply areas with repeated classifier confusion.

cropland expansion by year

Layer indicating the year in which pixels classified as cropland expansion were converted from non-cropland to cropland. e.g., a value of 2009 represents land that was converted between the 2008 growing season and the 2009 growing season.

cropland abandonment by year

Layer indicating the year in which pixels classified as cropland abandonment were converted from cropland to non-cropland. e.g., a value of 2009 represents land that was still cropped in 2008 and no longer cropped during the 2009 growing season.

Irrigation frequency (i.e., how many years a field was irrigation between 1997 and 2017) derived from LANID (i.e., LANdsat-based Irrigation Dataset) based on the methods of Xie et al. (2019) Mapping irrigated cropland extent across the conterminous United States at 30 m resolution using a semi-automatic training approach on Google Earth Engine. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

For information on the 1997-2017 dataset and further irrigation mapping work, please contact Drs. Yanhua Xie xie78@wisc.edu and Tyler Lark lark@wisc.edu

Map of potentially intact grasslands versus grasslands that have been planted or improved. Potentially intact grasslands were identified as those not planted, plowed, or otherwise improved for at least 25 years according to data from the USGS National Land Cover Database and the USDA Cropland Data Layer.

For more info see Lark, T.J. (2020) Protecting our prairies: Research and policy actions for conserving America’s grasslands. Land Use Policy.