Now, I am not a mathematician by any stretch, but if I'm right about some calculations I've been doing with the latest land use trends from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, conventional wisdom about the growth and change in the Chesapeake Bay watershed is in for some revisions. It is based on standardized sampling, and is set up do be reliable for national, regional and state analysis. The latest information estimates acreages of different land uses in the Chesapeake watershed for 1992, and compares it with 1987 and 1982. There are a number of different categories, including acreages of waterbodies. The accompanying chart is what resulted.
More work is needed here.
Cropland and pasture seem to be converted to urban uses about equally. But most disturbing is the finding that we have expanded urban land uses 25 percent in 10 years. The population has grown at nowhere near that rate, so the conclusion that seems inevitable is that we are continuing to allow lower and lower density development with all its economically wasteful and environmentally destructive implications. There is more grist as we delve into the sub-basin data. This is surprising to me, as I had been led to believe it was happening more in the Potomac and Susquehanna.