Conversion of Forestland to Agriculture in Hubbard County, Minnesota By: Henry Rodman Cory Kimball 2013

Hubbard County Hubbard county is in North Central MN – 639,360 acres – 28 townships Agriculture is growing as part of the land use – Crop prices are increasing – Potatoes are a main crop in the County RDO/Lamb Weston is a large company based in Park Rapids

Why is this happening??? CRP land grants are up People need money so they rent their land Some farmers are retiring and larger farmers are buying their land Cropland is more profitable than forestland

Remote Sensing as a Tool With remote sensing we can really see change in the landscape over the years Provides a ‘bird’s eye view’ on the landscape With access to the right orthorectified imagery and software we can do this We can compare maps throughout the years

Research Interest We are interested in this research since we are going to school for forest management It was a long process to get the right imagery Conversations with the Hubbard County Land Department – Mark Lohmeier – Hubbard County Commissioner – Kevin Trappe – GIS Coordinator for Hubbard Co.

Field Observations Visit to Park Rapids, MN – Snow was very deep, but Cory was still able to document deforestation Slash Pile New Irrigator

Software Resources LandSat - USGS – Imagery acquired from the GLOVIS browser Photos from Past Years – 2000 – 2011 Landsat 5 and 7 TM Arc GIS 10.1 – Used to display isolate shapefile of Hubbard County – Shapefile ERDAS Imagine 2011 – Used to derive Classifications of different land uses – Accuracy assessments

Henry hard at Work ERDAS can give a man a headache

Imagery Took a few different trials to decide Decided on Landsat 5/7 – 7 band – 2 different images Images from 2000 through 2011 were acquired – Full coverage of Hubbard County – Main focus on agriculture is in the South half

Image Classification Supervised Classification – training sites per class – Merged them together into similar classes (8) Classes Included: – Forest land – Agriculture – Water – Clear Cut Forest land – Developed – Wetlands – Shadow – Clouds

Results of 2000 Imagery Landsat Classified

Results of 2009 Imagery Landsat Classified

Classified Images Compared 2000 compared to 2009 Difficult to see change with the whole county. The change detection slide will tell the details of the change.

Change Detection We can see a very slight change in forest cover from 2000 to 2009

Accuracy Assessment 2000 Accuracy 2009 Accuracy

Problems Encountered Doing this project on a whole county is tough Small issues with LandSat – Clouds – Lines – Low resolution Downloading Imagery was time-consuming – Attempts at using NAIP Imagery took many trials with ERDAS IMAGINE Accuracy is questionable Some areas were classified incorrectly – It would be nice to personally see all the landscape

Conclusions – Field observations indicate a significant change in land use, but our results do not reflect that trend

References Mark Lomeier – Hubbard Co. Land Commissioner Kevin Trappe – Hubbard Co. GIS Department Labs 7-12 FR3262