Charlie Schouest
Environmental Science
Period 1
Mr. Crowley
Chapter 18: Land Resources Outline
World Land Use
 33 percent of all land is either rock, ice, tundra, desert, roads, or urban areas
 26 percent forests
 26 percent permanent pasture
 12 percent cropland
 3 percent wetlands and lakes
Land Use in the United States
 55 percent of the Land is privately owned
 3 percent is owned by Native American tribes
 35 percent is owned by the federal government
 7 percent of U.S land is owned by states and local governments
 Most federally owned land is in Alaska and 11 western states
 The federally owned land is managed by four agencies
 These agencies are the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Fish and
Wildlife Services (FWS), National Park Service (NPS), and the U.S. Forest
Service (USFS).
Managing Public and Private Land
 Many environmental concerns converge in the matter of land use
 Pollution, population issues, preservation of our biological resources,
mineral and energy requirements, and production of food are all tied to land
use.
 See figure 18.2 in book for selected federal lands
 See table 18.1 for Administration and distribution of federal land
Management of Federal Lands
 United States citizens are divided into two groups on how to treat federal
land
 These two groups are known as the wise-use movement and the
environmental movement
 The wise-use movement group wishes to exploit and use the resources
protected by the federal government while the environmental movement
wishes to preserve the environment.
 The Wise-use movement believes: 1. Put all national forests under timber
management, including old-growth forests. 2. Permit mining and
commercial development of wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, and national
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parks, where appropriate. 3. Allow unrestricted development of wetlands.
4. Change the Endangered Species Act so that economic factors are
considered along with scientific factor. 5. Sell parts of resource-rich federal
lands to private interests, such as mining, oil, coal, ranching, and timber
groups, for sustainable resource extraction.
Environmental movement believes that: the primary purpose of public
lands is to protect biological diversity and ecosystem integrity, those who
extract resources from public lands should pay U.S. citizens compensation
equal to the fair market value of the resource and not be subsidized by
taxpayers, and lastly those who use public lands should be accountable for
any environmental damage they cause.
Wilderness
 Wilderness encompasses regions where the land and its community of
organisms are not greatly distributed by human activities and where
humans visit but do not permanently inhabit.
 Wilderness Act of 1964 authorized the U.S. government to set aside
federally owned land that retains its primeval character and lacks
permanent improvements or human habitation
 National Wilderness Preservation System
 42 percent of wilderness areas are in national parks
 33 percent of national forests are wilderness areas
 22 percent of national wildlife refuges are wilderness area
 More than one half of the lands in the National Wilderness Preservation
System lie in Alaska
National Parks
 In 1872 Congress established the world’s first national park, Yellowstone
National Park, in the federal lands in territories of Montana and Wyoming.
 The National Park System was created in 1916 as a new federal bureau in the
Department of Interior and given the responsibility to administer the
national parks and monuments.
 The Land and Water Conservation act of 1965 provided money for several
national parks we have today.
Wildlife Refuges
 The National Wildlife Refuge System was established in 1903 by Teddy
Roosevelt
 The National Wildlife Refuge System contains more than 535 refuges, with at
least one in each of the 50 states.
 The system encompasses 95 million acres of land
 The mission of The National Wildlife Refuge System is to preserve lands and
waters for the conservation of fishes, wildlife and plants in the United States.
Forest
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Forests are important ecosystems that provide many goods and services to
support human society, occupy less than one-third of Earth’s total land area.
Timber harvested from forests is used for fuel, construction materials, and
paper products
Forests influence local and regional climate conditions
Transpiration is the result of a biological cooling in which water from soil is
absorbed by roots, transported through plants, and then evaporated from
their leaves and stems.
Forests also play an essential role in regulating global biogeochemical cycles,
such as those for carbon and nitrogen
Trees in forests have roots that hold vast tracts of soil in place, reducing
erosion, and mudslides
Forests protect watersheds because they absorb, hold, and slowly release
water
Deforestation
 The most serious problem facing the world’s forest is deforestation
 According to the FAO’s latest estimates, forests are shrinking about 22.2
million acres each year
 Causes of deforestation include fires caused by drought and land clearing
practices, expansion of agriculture, construction of roads in forests, tree
harvests, and insects and disease
 Deforestation results in decreased soil fertility through rapid leaching of the
essential mineral nutrients found in most forest soils
 Deforestation contributes to the extinction of many species
 Deforestation is thought to induce regional and global climate changes
Forest Trends in the United States
 In recent years, most temperate forests in the Rocky Mountains, Great lakes
region, and New England and other eastern states have been holding steady
or even expanding.
 In the U.S. 57 percent of forests are privately owned
 20 percent are owned by the federal government
 15 percent are owned by Corporations
 8 percent are owned by state and local governments
 The Forest legacy program is a bill that helps private landowners protect
environmentally important forestlands from development
 According to the USFS the U.S. has 155 national forests encompassing 191
million acres of land
Agricultural Lands
 The United States has more than 300 million acres of prime farmland
 Prime farmland is land that has the soil type, growing conditions, and
available water to produce food, forage, fiber, and oilseed crops.
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According to the American Farmland Trust, more than 400,000 acres of
prime U.S. farmland are lost each year
The 1996 Farm bill included funding for the establishment of a national
Farmland Protection Program
This voluntary program helps farmers keep their land in agriculture
Wetlands
 The Wetlands are lands transitional between aquatic and terrestrial
ecosystems
 Wetlands recharge groundwater and reduce damage from flooding because
they hold excess water when rivers flood their banks
 Wetlands also improve water quality by trapping and holding nitrates and
phosphates from fertilizers
 Wetlands also provide habitat for many species listed as endangered or
threatened
 More than half the wetlands that existed originally in the U.S. are now gone
 Only 104 million acres remain
 The loss of wetlands is legislatively controlled by a section of the 1972 Clean
Water act
Coastlines
 Coastal wetlands, also called saltwater wetlands, provide food and protective
habitats for many aquatic animals.
 Many Coastal areas are overdeveloped, highly polluted, and overfished
 About 2/3 of the world lives within 93 miles of a coastline
 The National Marine Sanctuary Program is in charge of the conservation,
recreation, education, mining of some resources, scientific research, and ship
salvaging near the coastline