this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Data Is Beautiful

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[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 80 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It seems a little inefficient to put all the airports together

[–] huquad@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

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

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 59 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

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

[–] troybot@midwest.social 16 points 11 months 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 4 points 11 months 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

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[–] Wahots@pawb.social 51 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] DemBoSain@midwest.social 26 points 11 months ago

Maybe we can combine it with "wildfires".

[–] aphonefriend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 40 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

Shit I'm hungry now I'll start the smoker

[–] ray@lemmy.ml 24 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Gotta see one of these with parking.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It would be a subset of "urban commercial", right? Somewhere in the range of half to three-quarters of it?

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[–] SuperCub@sh.itjust.works 22 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone 11 points 11 months ago

Yeah that land could be used for more christmas trees

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[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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 12 points 11 months 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 9 points 11 months ago

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

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 17 points 11 months ago

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

[–] TehWorld@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

They have rights to nearly all the timberland in washington, which covers about half the state. They're unbelievably huge, it's ridiculous.

[–] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 11 months ago
[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 11 points 11 months ago (8 children)

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

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[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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

Also, mfs drinking too much corn syrup.

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 8 points 11 months ago (2 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 8 points 11 months ago (4 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 6 points 11 months ago

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

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[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Do we not eat any of the cows?

[–] kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 22 points 11 months 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.

[–] Phytobus@lemm.ee 13 points 11 months ago

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

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] ElcaineVolta@kbin.melroy.org 6 points 11 months ago

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

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[–] str82L@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months 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 8 points 11 months 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 4 points 11 months 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

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Where's the amounts used strictly for cars?

[–] lattrommi@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

The black lines used for borders could be that. I'm not saying it is, just that it might be close to the amount used by roads other than rural highways.

[–] MisterScruffy@lemmy.ml 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

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

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[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 7 points 11 months ago

Man that guy Urban needs so many houses... What does he even do with them all?

[–] Zacryon@feddit.org 7 points 11 months ago

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

[–] Rokin@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

Very interesting! Now do one for EU, please.

[–] RecipeForHate1@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

Get rid of livestock

[–] Flames5123@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

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

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

How nice for the Reed family/Green Diamond to be split into 'private family owned timberland' and 'corporate timberland'.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 4 points 11 months ago

and somebody owns every square inch of it.

[–] Killercat103@slrpnk.net 3 points 11 months ago

Food we eat is sepperate from cow pastures...

Nice!

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