Dataset of Land Reclamation of United States of American during 1000-1780

Reconstruction of Forest and Grassland Cover for the Conterminous United States from 1000 AD to 2000 AD

“…Most used cropland was concentrated southwest of CONUS before the 15th century. During the colonial period, croplands along the eastern seaboard expanded rapidly, and the reclamation rates in some areas reached 40% [44]. Following the War of Independence in 1776, CONUS experienced visible land use/cover changes dominated by land reclamation and urban expansion as the Industrial Revolution progressed [29].…”

“…We obtained historical cropland cover in CONUS from the LandReclaUSA_1000-2000 dataset. Zhao et al [44] estimated the cropland area and reclamation rate based on historical documents for CONUS (per capita cropland during pre-Columbian and colonial periods) over the past millennium. They then transformed the cropland area into a 10 km spatially-explicit dataset by devising a land reclamation suitability model, which quantified factors closely related to the spatial distribution of cropland (including slope, altitude, To characterize the discrepancies in vegetation depletion between different geographic regions, we grouped the 48 states into eight sub-regions (Northeast, Southeast, North Central, South Central, Great Plains, Intermountain, Pacific Northwest, and Pacific Southwest) based on the spatial distribution structure of forests and grasslands, topographic factors of terrain, and socioeconomic development [43].…”

“…We obtained historical cropland cover in CONUS from the LandReclaUSA_ 1000-2000 dataset. Zhao et al [44] estimated the cropland area and reclamation rate based on historical documents for CONUS (per capita cropland during pre-Columbian and colonial periods) over the past millennium. They then transformed the cropland area into a 10 km spatially-explicit dataset by devising a land reclamation suitability model, which quantified factors closely related to the spatial distribution of cropland (including slope, altitude, and agroclimatic potential productivity).…”

“…To ensure data consistency, we used the scaling relation between built-up and cropland areas in each sub-region [33] as the average coefficient of urbanization impact in this area (Table 4). Then, combined with the land reclamation rate [44], we determined the proportion of potential natural forest and grassland occupied by urban construction in each 5 min grid square. We excluded this from PENF and PENG after subtracting cropland and finally mapped the historical forest and grassland cover in CONUS at 1850, 1900, 1950, and 2000.…”