New England Land Use Changes

Land use patterns in New England have fluctuated from pre-colonial times to the present. As settler populations grew, what was originally a vast landscape of forest eventually gave way to cleared land for pasture and crops -- reaching an agricultural height about the year 1850. Since then, as livelihoods and population dynamics continued to change, forests have returned to dominate the New England landscape once again. These dynamic forest patterns can be directly correlated with wildlife trends (see related diagram). Image courtesy of David Foster, the Harvard Forest.

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