Drivers of Change

The Sierra Nevada’s Disappearing Agricultural Land

Numerous factors – population growth, land use change and development patterns – affect agricultural lands throughout the Sierra Nevada. Population growth throughout the SOSA region is the major driver of change for agricultural lands. Currently, nearly 70 percent of California’s Sierra Nevada population resides along the western foothills and the population in these counties is expected to grow by 50-100 percent by 2020.

The increasing population requires homes, businesses and schools for the new residents. All these people and businesses require land. Frequently, the most economically and easily accessible lands for development are agricultural lands. Less efficient land use development patterns through ranchette, second homes and leapfrog development increase land consumption of agricultural lands.

As a group, agriculturalists in the Sierra Nevada are aging. The combined factors of older farmers and ranchers with an increasing population, the potential for many parcels of agricultural lands to change hands and uses exists. As they reach retirement age, continued active production on their lands is not guaranteed.

At the base level, when land use changes from agriculture to any other use, the state of agriculture in the Sierra Nevada is altered. Agriculture land developed for residential or commercial uses will never be returned to productive agriculture lands.

Local land use policies directed at maintaining working landscapes while accommodating necessary growth can be accomplished. General plans direct and set long-term development plans for the community and require an open space and conservation elements. However an agriculture element is not required. Communities with extensive farmlands, ranchlands and/or timberlands can help guide future development by implementing an agriculture element during general plan updates.

Sierra Nevada Public and Private Lands

Individuals, corporations, and conservancies privately own approximately 50 percent of the forest and ranch lands throughout California and local, state, and federal agencies own and manage the other 50 percent. Based on percentage, no state contains more federal lands than Nevada, more than 87 percent of the state. State and local government agencies push that total to greater than 88 percent, while private individuals own slightly more than 11 percent of Nevada’s lands.

In the Sierra region, similar to Nevada, the scale tips toward a higher percentage of public land. Privately owned timber and grazing lands in the Sierra make up approximately 36 percent of the land base, while publicly managed lands comprise 64 percent. Public-private ownership figures can vary quite a bit by county, with some counties, like Inyo, having more than 95 percent public lands.

A wide variety of federal, state and local agencies retain jurisdiction over publicly owned timber and ranchlands in the Sierra. The largest landowners are the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service.

The California portions of the Sierra Nevada regions used for this report encompass more than 31 million acres. Based on California Forest and Range Assessment Program reports, public ownership – federal, state, and local governments – of land in the Sierra Nevada is nearly twice the private land acres: roughly 20 million acres to 11 million acres. The state of California Forest and Range Assessment Program (FRAP) accurately maps land use in California. Unfortunately there is less data available for Nevada counties.

Of the 31 million acres in the California portion of the project area roughly 1.2 million acres (3.8%) is used for agriculture. Dry land grazing also occurs on most of the 3.3 million acres (10.7% of the land area) of hardwood forestland (mostly blue oak) and 2.2 million acres (8.1% of the land area) of herbaceous, mostly annual grasslands. Most of the hardwood and herbaceous lands are in private ownership. However, substantial grazing opportunities throughout the regions occur on publicly owned lands such as USDA National Forests and Bureau of Land Management lands. Of particular note was the breakdown of agriculture as a land use between private and public lands. With the exception of grazing, agriculture primarily takes place on private lands. However, the percentage of private lands used for agriculture in each region varies considerably.

* Northern:         13% of private land is in agriculture, or 6% of all land
* Tahoe/Reno:      0.003% of private land is in agriculture, or 0.0012% of all land
* East Side:          9% of private land is in agriculture, or 1% of all land
* Northwest:         6% of private land is in agriculture, or 3% of all land
* Southern:         15% of all private land is in agriculture, or 6% of all land

This data shows how agriculture plays a different role both economically and culturally within the different regions of the Sierra Nevada depending on its prevalence in the region.

Breaking down the land use coverage into public and private properties provides insight to potential residential and urban expansion. The land use of private property can more easily be changed than its counterpart in the public domain.

The land uses of hardwood and herbaceous regions (both extensively used for grazing livestock), and farming consist of more than 5.8 million acres of private land in SOSA California, more than half of the private land in the region. Working landscapes on private land in the California Sierra are potentially vulnerable to land use change due to their proximity to expanding urban centers, regulatory ease of changing use, and their aesthetic quality for residential use.

The sheer amount of land used for grazing, roughly 6 million acres or 20 percent of the California SOSA region, dictates the potential threat of land use change to another, non-working landscape use. Private timberlands also face considerable likelihood of land use change simply due to the sheer amount of private timberlands, 2.69 million acres, throughout the California SOSA region.

Land Use

Actual acreage for each SOSA region has been broken down into ten categories: agriculture, barren, conifer, desert, hardwood, herbaceous, shrub, urban, water and wetland.The land use coverage of SOSA California’s 31 million acres break down in the following manner:

The public land use breakdown in SOSA California:

The following chart shows private land use in SOSA California

The vegetative classifications for California lands were designated by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Forest and Range Assessment Program (FRAP). The classification codes were assigned based upon a hierarchical procedure, which combined GIS and image processing with the work of 14 prior mapping projects. Generally “agriculture” is irrigated cropland, developed agriculture and orchard lands, while “herbaceous” is non-irrigated grazing land. For more information on the process, please see Methods for Development of Habitat Acres Forest and Range Assessment 2002.


Download data for land use by region