this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Data Is Beautiful

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[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 42 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It seems a little inefficient to put all the airports together

[–] huquad@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

Its really not so bad once you get over the 12 hour drive.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Why do they keep allocating land to wildfires if they're so destructive /s

[–] troybot@midwest.social 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's the federal wildfire sanctuary established by president William McKinney. While most fire has been domesticated, the remaining feral fire is allowed to burn free in Utah.

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

I heard that even though the fire was born here, it has illegal flameborn parents so they’re going to put it on a cargo ship with a bunch of pallets and deport it and that’s how we’ll solve the wildfire issue. Saw it on Joe rogan

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Can't rake everywhere all the time

[–] Wahots@pawb.social 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Golf is way too big, imo. No other sport even makes the list here.

[–] DemBoSain@midwest.social 17 points 1 week ago

Maybe we can combine it with "wildfires".

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 15 points 1 week ago

"Wildfires" is a surprisingly large area. I wonder what the 2025 area for it is.

[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It's quite interesting that "rural highways" is one of the categories identified, but not any other sort of improved road. The data source has a base granularity where one square is 250,000 acres (~100,000 hectares), and then additional state data is factored in for increased precision. It supposingly being USDA data, they might primarily care only about those highways used to connect farms to the national markets.

That said, I would be keenly interested in the land used for low-volume, residential streets that support suburban and rural sprawl, in comparison to streets in urban areas. Unlike highways which provides fast connectivity, and unlike dense urban-core streets that produce value by hosting local businesses and serving local residents, suburban streets take up space, intentional break connectivity (ie cul de sacs), and ultimately return very little in value to anyone except to the adjacent homeowners, essentially as extensions of their privately-owned driveways.

It may very well be in USDA's interest to collect data on suburban sprawl, as much of the land taken for such developments was perfectly good, arable land.

[–] littletoolshed@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I love this visualization and for some reason your comment made me also wish we had this data correlated with the water usage for each land use category.

[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

There'd be a square or two which just say "Nestlé" lol

[–] ray@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago

Gotta see one of these with parking.

[–] aphonefriend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago

So nice of the 100 largest land owning families to have the same amount of land as the entire urban or rural housing population of the rest of the country. I assume it's to fatten themselves up for the rest of us just like the cows.

When do we get to eat them again?

[–] TehWorld@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I have certainly heard of Weyerhauser, but had no idea they were that big. They're the only 'individual' owner shown. The land-owning families is odd as I'm sure it overlaps a lot with pasture and private timberland.

[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And people will still say that the meat/dairy industry aren't a plague

[–] yozul@beehaw.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

What? There are lots of legitimate complaints about the meat and dairy industries, but almost all that land being used for them is arid, rocky wasteland that has a cow wander over it twice a year. That's not actually even on the list of problems with those industries.

[–] str82L@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Can't figure out why the 100 largest landowning families aren't using their land for any of the other reasons. Surely some of them are having it farmed for them too?

[–] TehWorld@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

OIL. There's a LOT of land that might be considered cow/grazing but won't really grow anything worth it. See West Texas.

[–] Move_to_mars@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Swamps don't make good farms, but some people try to farm in FL, it's just inefficient and heavily pollutes or eliminates wetlands

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Do we not eat any of the cows?

[–] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago

I expect a substantial portion of that cow pasture/range land is dry grasslands and shrub steppe out west. It's rough terrain and not good for much else. A lot of it doesn't even have cows on it most of the time.

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Vegans and ecologists have been talking about this exact issue for a while now

[–] ElcaineVolta@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 1 week ago

literally decades. lots of talk around the conditions that bring new pandemics too.

[–] Phytobus@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

It simply takes a loooot of food to produce 1kg of beef

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I would love to flip the railroad usage and cow pasture usage.

Also, mfs drinking too much corn syrup.

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

theresa tiny part thats for maple syrup

[–] Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

This graph is confusing because there are state lines drawn underneath, but it’s not saying by state.

[–] Rokin@lemm.ee 3 points 1 week ago

Very interesting! Now do one for EU, please.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 2 points 1 week ago

and somebody owns every square inch of it.

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Remember, not all land is the same. Some is too dry to grow human food. Some too wet. There are also other things that land is either too or not enough.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I bet we could still multiply output by a decent number by replacing meat production with directly edible crops, if there was a need for it

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 3 points 1 week ago

It us wild that there is not a need. Distribution is (or was) the issue. Very sad humans refuse to feed others.

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

Where's the amounts used strictly for cars?

[–] MisterScruffy@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can we put the 100 largest landowning families in Florida, then saw it off from the rest of the country?

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

no need to saw, when invasive species and the ocean is taking over. because florida loves to import all the illegal exotic animals, they got plenty reptiles, giant snails, giant rats. the latter 2 both carry nasty parasites.

[–] stray@pawb.social 1 points 1 week ago

Shit, there are landlords in the snails?

[–] Killercat103@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago

Food we eat is sepperate from cow pastures...

Nice!

[–] shasta@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah Maine is so well known for it's urban housing

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago

And Nevada for its timberland.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

God I miss living in the west.

[–] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

This makes my eyes bleed

[–] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago
[–] Zacryon@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

So, if most people are going vegan, there would be much more space for other stuff, yes?

is Alaska included? or are we just ignored because of our small population?