The United States has 2.3 billion acres of land – that’s 1.9 billion acres in the contiguous 48 states, approximately 375 million acres in Alaska and about 7 million acres in Hawaii.

A 2017 census recorded that 325.7 million people lived in America last year. With that many people living in our country and billions of acres of land, how is it being used?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) divides the U.S. into six major types of land: cropland, grassland pasture and range, forest-use land, urban and rural residential areas, special-use areas and miscellaneous.

“Gathered together, cropland would take up more than a fifth of the 48 contiguous states. Pasture and rangeland would cover most the Western U.S., and all of the country’s cities and towns would fit neatly in the Northeast,” according to a recent Bloomberg article by Dave Merrill and Lauren Leatherby.

It’s no surprise that urban/rural residential areas don’t take up the majority of the land in the U.S. Major cities are usually tightly packed and mostly located in the Northeast. “Urban areas make up just 3.6 percent of the total size of the 48 contiguous states.”

While urban areas are steadily growing, the numbers for the other five major types of land uses are comparatively high. Taking up about a fifth of the country is agricultural land and more than a third of U.S. land is used for pasture.

68.9 million acres are categorized as miscellaneous, which includes cemeteries, golf courses, marshes, deserts and other areas of “low economic value.” 168.6 million acres are considered special use, which includes national parks, wildlife areas, highways, railroads and military bases. And last but not least is forestland, which includes forests and timberland that make up a quarter of the contiguous U.S.

According to the Bloomberg article, “The 48 contiguous states alone are a 1.9 billion-acre jigsaw puzzle of cities, farms, forests and pastures that Americans use to feed themselves, power their economy and extract value for business and pleasure.”

To read the full article, head over to www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use.