60 square miles of area’s farmland ‘urbanized’ over 15 years, study estimates

Farmland being lost to urban sprawl in northwest Ohio may not be as significant as some thought—at least in Lucas County and eight surrounding counties.

A BGSU study led by Robert Vincent, geology, used satellite data to estimate how much of each county’s cropland became urbanized between 1984 and 1999. The figure was less than 3 percent (about 11,000 acres) in Lucas County, and even lower in the other eight counties—Defiance, Fulton, Henry, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Williams and Wood.

The farm acreage that became urbanized in Lucas County during the 15-year period represents roughly 17 square miles—5 percent of the county’s 343 square miles and an area about one-fifth the size of Toledo.

For the nine counties combined, an estimated 38,590 acres were urbanized over the 15 years. That’s roughly 60 square miles, or about 1.6 percent of the nearly 3,800 total square miles in the nine counties.

The study compared satellite images of the region in July 1984 and September 1999 to reach its estimates, which, when compared with Lucas County records for the same years, proved to be about 94 percent accurate.

Vincent said the figures were lower than he had expected and indicated that northwest Ohio isn’t losing farm acreage at an “alarming” rate.

“We still have to be careful about our farmland, but at least we don’t have to be panicked that it’s (urbanization) happening at an extremely high rate,” he said.

If the figures are lower than many people might think, it’s in part a function of statistics, Vincent acknowledged. Taking the same farm acreage that was lost during the 15-year period and looking at it in terms of urban acreage would give the appearance of large urban growth, especially since urban acreage is relatively small in the combined nine-county area, he explained.

“People don’t realize how big northwest Ohio is,” he said, and everything considered, urbanized farmland is “not a big percentage” of the whole.

Vincent summarized the study Friday for about 65 people, many of them public officials and representatives of the agricultural industry, at a meeting sponsored by BGSU’s Center for Policy Analysis and Public Service. The center provides information and educational resources to local governments as well as private and nonprofit organizations in northwest Ohio.

Also speaking at the Friday morning event was Xiaowen Wu, a BGSU graduate student who discussed the use of satellite data for the separate mapping of bare soil and corn stubble for public health and soil erosion studies and for estimating no-till acreage.