Land Use - Chase Rankin

According to this article, the 2010 census clearly states that there is still 47% of the US that is not occupied by humans. Despite having over 300 million people that live in America, this seems like a substantial amount of land to simply not be used. Although America has around 2.3 billion acres of land, Author George Wuerthner states in the article "The Truth About Land Use In the United States" that "375 million acres are in Alaska and not suitable for agricultural production." and he also points out that "the land area of the lower 48 states is approximately 1.9 billion acres." These are all great statistics to put in to perspective how we use the land in the US. The craziest fact to me that is stated in this article by George Wuerthner is "only 66 million acres are considered developed lands. This amounts to 3 percent of the land area in the U.S., yet this small land base is home to 75 percent of the population." This statistic right here just goes to show how densely populated we make our areas in America. There is so much land all over America that isn't developed, yet nobody wants to go develop it because in all reality, we are too lazy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. In all honesty, I think it is good that we leave majority of our land undeveloped because there are other living things in America that have home and live there, so we can't just go around making everything ours. I think that a lot of land needs to stay undeveloped as it is home to nature.

Source:https://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm