Subdivisions and American Agriculture Essay -- Geography USA Essays Pa

Subdivisions and American Agriculture Across Wyoming and the West, you can see miles and miles of undeveloped land. However, in the next 100 years will that be true? This once-frontier land has had massive growths in population. For retired people, the West and Midwest are becoming more attractive due to the cheap land that is less populated. Subdivisions are moving farther and farther out into the country. From 1990 to 1995, the counties in the Rocky Mountain region increased three times faster than the rest of the United States (Theobald, Miller, and Hobbs 26). Due to this increase, other areas in the environment have been negatively affected. Numerous problems have surfaced as a result of 5 acre plots. Wildlife habitats have been disturbed through construction. In conjunction with the disturbance of wildlife, plant population and landscape have also been removed and disturbed. The recent building increases have also sparked arguments over water rights and ground water. From â€Å"Ranching the View: Subdivisions versus Agriculture,† the authors suggest subdivisions can have profound impacts on rural areas. This is primarily due to the organization of the subdivisions to gain the most housing sites possible, the subdivisions have been arranged into small plots. The houses then take up a large amount of acreage and are compacted. However, separately each individual plot is around 5 acres. And this is especially relevant if the subdivisions are located near protected areas. With an increase in human population more housing is needed. Valuable farmland, range land, and grassland have been constructed into subdivisions. Besides the subdivision layout problem, subdivisions also bring roads, fences, wells, lawns, and buildings. Ano... ...tion biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology 9.2 (1995): 459-461. Agricola. 29 March 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com. Radeloff, Volker C., Hammer, Roger B., and Susan I. Stewart. "Rural and Suburban Sprawl in the U.S. Midwest from 1940 to 2000 and Its Relation to Forest Fragmentation." Conservation Biology 19.3 (2005): 793-805. Academic Search Premier. 28 March 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com. Theobald, D.M., Miller, J.R., and N.T. Hobbs. â€Å"Estimating the cumulative effects of development on wildlife habitat.† Landscape and Urban Planning 39 (1997): 25-36. 29 March 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com. Veech, Joseph A. "A Comparison of Landscapes Occupied by Increasing and Decreasing Populations of Grassland Birds." Conservation Biology 20.5 (2006): 1422-1432. Academic Search Premier. 29 March 2007. http://search.ebscohost.com.