Conversion of Forestland to Agriculture in Hubbard County, Minnesota

By: Henry RodmanCory 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 PileNew 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– 10-30 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 Assessment2000 Accuracy

2009 Accuracy

Class Name

Reference

TotalsClassified

TotalsNumber Correct

Producers Accuracy

Users Accuracy

Non-forest 14 15 9 64.29% 60.00%Clouds/Shadow 12 15 12 100.00% 80.00%

Forest 19 15 12 63.16% 80.00%Wetlands 11 15 6 54.55% 40.00%

Water 19 15 15 78.95% 100.00%

Totals 75 75 54

72.00%

ACCURACY TOTALS

Overall Classification 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

• http://glovis.usgs.gov/

• Mark Lomeier – Hubbard Co. Land Commissioner

• Kevin Trappe – Hubbard Co. GIS Department

• http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

• Labs 7-12 FR3262