Disappearing..
This 2010 Natural Resources Inventory data was published back in October but I haven’t seen anyone do anything with it, so… here it is. Key stats: Of Virginia’s 27.1 million acres of surface area, 1.3 million were developed between 1982 and 2010. Dig into the details, and you’ll find that cropland and forest are declining the fastest, while pastureland saw a small increase.
The silver lining is that — nationally, at least — the conversion of land to developed uses peaked in 1992-1997, and has been slowing ever since. As Payton Chung observes in Greater Greater Washington, “suburban sprawl” (i.e. scattered, low-density development) may have peaked 20 years ago. The slowing of sprawl may have contributed to the leveling off of Vehicle Miles Traveled in the mid-2000s. And there is every indication that land conversion and VMT have slowed even more in the current decade.
— JAB
