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The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently revised its Natural Resources Inventory for farmland lost from 1992-1997. Based on land use changes in over 800,000 sites, it is an established and respected source of data about sprawling development.
Continuing the trend of recent decades, the inventory shows a significant increase in suburban sprawl during the 1990s. In fact, between 1992-1997, we lost 11.2 million acres worth of farmland and other open spaces to sprawl. This means the annual average rate is 2.2 million acres, which exceeds the rate of open space destruction during the previous decade by about one-and-a-half times.
The total land lost to sprawl is currently about 100 million acres, 25 million acres of which were developed in the 15 year period from 1982 to 1997 alone.
Get more details on the USDA's NRI website.
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