Northern Global Change Research Program

The Potential of U.S. Forest Soils to Sequester Carbon and Mitigate the Greenhouse Effect

Metric Unit Data

Table 1	Table 2
Table 2a	Table 3
Table 4	Table 4a
Table 5	Table 6
Table 6a	Table 7
Table 8	Table 9
Table 9a	Table 9b
Table 10	Table 11
Table 12	Table 13
Table 14	Table 15
Table 16	Table 17
Table 18	Table 18a
Table 19	Table 2 0
Table 21	Table 22
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Chapter 2: Current and Historical Trends in Use, Management and Disturbance of United States Forest Lands-Metric Unit Data
by Richard A. Birdsey & George M. Lewis

Table 1: Land Area of the United States by land use/land cover class, 1987 and 1997.

			Change
Land use/land cover	1987	1997	1987-1997
	(Million ha)

Conterminous U.S.:
Timberland	190.2	198.5	8.4
Reserved forest land	15.1	17.0	1.9
Other forest land	40.4	34.6	-5.9
Total forest land¹	245.6	250.0	4.4

Cropland	164.5	152.3	-12.2
Conservation reserve	5.5	13.2	7.7
Pasture land	51.6	48.4	-3.2
Range land	249.3	247.2	-2.1
Other rural land	20.0	20.4	0.5
Developed land	32.0	39.5	7.5
Total nonforest land²	522.8	521.0	-1.7

Sum of forest and nonforest	768.4	771.0	2.6
Total land³	764.0	764.0	0.0
Unreconciled difference⁴	4.4	7.1	2.7

Alaska
Timberland	6.4	5.0	-1.4
Reserved forest land	2.1	4.0	1.9
Other forest land	43.7	42.5	-1.2
Total forest land	52.2	51.6	-0.6
Total nonforest land	94.3	96.4	2.1
Total land	146.5	147.9	1.5

Hawaii
Timberland	0.3	0.3	0.0
Reserved forest land	0.0	0.1	0.0
Other forest land	0.4	0.3	0.0
Total forest land	0.7	0.7	0.0
Total nonforest land	1.0	1.0	0.0
Total land	1.7	1.7	0.0

United States:
Timberland	196.8	203.8	7.0
Reserved forest land	17.2	21.0	3.8
Other forest land	84.5	77.4	-7.1
Total forest land	298.6	302.3	3.7
Total nonforest land	618.0	618.3	0.4
Total land	916.5	920.6	4.1
¹ From Smith et al. 2001.
² From USDA NRCS 2001 (private land) and other public records.
³ From U.S. Census.
⁴ The sum of Individual sources of information does not equal the total land area because of differences in sampling, definitions, timing, and scope of data collection.

Users of these tables are kindly requested to cite their source:
Birdsey, Richard A.; Lewis, George M. 2002. Current and Historical Trends n Use, Management and Disturbance of United States Forest Lands. IN: Kimble, John et al. (eds.), The Potential of U.S. Forest Soils to Sequester Carbon and Mitigate the Greenhouse Effect. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. XXX p.

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