Land Use Change and Soil Sustainability in South Dakota and Nebraska States.

Sustainable land management involves the management of land, water, biodiversity and other resource’s that meets human requirements while maintaining ecosystem services. In the northern Great Plains (NGP), land-use changes have the potential to place many soils at the tipping point of sustainability. The objectives of this study were to 1) evaluate the rate of change from 2006 to 2012 and from 2012 to 2014 in South Dakota and Nebraska; 2) assessing if land use change was related to different land capability classes; and 3) correlating land use change with soil sustainability. South Dakota and Nebraska were selected for this study because they are located in climate transition zone having row cropping in eastern and grasslands in the west. For South Dakota and Nebraska, 43,200 and 38,400 points, respectively were visually classified from high resolution imagery in 2006, 2012 and 2014 into five different categories (cropland, grassland, Habitat, NonAg and Water). From 2006 to 2014, 910,000 million hectares were converted from grassland to cropland in South Dakota and 360,000 hectares were converted from grassland to cropland in Nebraska. In South Dakota, approximately 92% of the land conversion occurred on land suitable for crop production, whereas in Nebraska 80% of the conversion occurred on land considered suitable for cropland (LCC ≥ IV). In both states, grassland conversions were concentrated in the eastern regions.