Fig 1.
Land use/cover of the Lake States, USA (MN, Minnesota; WI, Wisconsin; MI, Michigan) derived from the 2012 Cropland Data Layer.
Land-cover categories were simplified to depict the major categories analyzed here.
Table 1.
Breakdown of the individual Cropland Data Layer (CDL) classes that comprise the land groups used in this analysis.
Fig 2.
Non-agricultural open lands and agricultural lands along a site quality gradient in 2008 and 2013 in the northern and southern Lake States region.
(A) Non-agricultural open land area in 2008 and 2013 in the northern and southern region; (B) the relative change of open lands between 2008 and 2013 in the northern and southern region; (C) agricultural land area in 2008 and 2013 in the northern and southern region; (D) the relative change of agricultural lands between 2008 and 2013 in the northern and southern region. Data shown are in thousands of hectares (A and C) and % change (difference between 2008 and 2013 divided by 2008 * 100). Note the differences in scale for all four graphs.
Fig 3.
Pixels used in the “Biophysical Land Identification” analysis (Fig 2).
The data have been filtered to remove single pixels and areas in public holding. Each pixel has been color-coded to indicate its site-quality class.
Fig 4.
Area of major land use/cover groups from the 2008 and 2013 CDL for the southern and northern Lake States (A). Panel B shows the relative change in area from 2008 to 2013 for each land group in the north and south. Open water and barren lands not included here. Table 1 describes the CDL classes that comprise the groups shown here.
Fig 5.
Transition diagrams depicting net changes in major land-cover groups between 2008 and 2013 in the northern and southern regions of each of the Lake States.
The numerical estimates above each figure (A–F), represent the total area undergoing land-cover change in each region. The width of the arc represents the percentage of the total that is associated with a specific land-cover change transition e.g. cultivated to developed.
Fig 6.
Increase in area of land cover classes as a result of a loss of open lands between 2008 and 2013 in each of the Lake States.
Fig 7.
Percentage of open land loss within each site-quality class for each year starting from 2009.
Table 2.
Environmental Quality Integrated Climate (EPIC) model simulated biomass and ethanol production potential on open lands in the Lake States in 2008 and 2013 [23].
Results are also presented as a fraction of the Energy Independency and Security (EISA) act of 2007 mandate for ethanol production targets for 2022.