INTRODUCTION

PROBLEM: There is considerable concern about the continued use of prime agricultural land for urban expansion tn the central valley countiesof California.  For further information see http://cfbf.com.

Teaching Strategy:

• Provide hard copies of the maps on this web page or generated by ArcView using the data sources cited below. Introduce the problem above.
• Ask students to analyze the maps and formulate conclusions about the change in the Central Valley over time.
• Ask students to make inferences about the causes of these changes.
• For a class that has access to a computer lab, the internet, and ArcView software, give them an ArcView project that contains the raw data.
• Direct the students to add themes from the data folder and activate those themes to generate various maps. From this, activity, students can formulate hypotheses related to change in the Central Valley.

DATA SOURCES

• The 1980 county population was retrieved from the ArcView Data provided by ESRI.
• The 1990 county population was retrieved from the California Department of Finance.
• The 1982-1992 agricultural data for the target counties was retrieved from the Census of Agriculture stored at the Oregon State University Data Center.

• The following graphic illustrates the percentage of population growth for the target counties from 1980-1990.

• The following graphics illustrate the percentage of change in agricultural acreage over the ten year period  (1982 - 1992). The trend for the majority of the counties has been for the reduction of agricultural acres.

•  The following graphics illustrates the percentage of  change in the land mass devoted to agriculture over the ten year period (1982-1992).  The trend for the majority of the counties has been for the reduction of agricultural landmass as a percent of the county area.

CONCLUSION:

• The greatest impact noted in the time period is that the largest loss in agricultural production was in San Joaquin and Merced counties. Both counties demonstrate the largest loss in both agricultural land mass as a percent of the county area and agricultural acreage.

• Sutter County seems to have the greatest preservation of agricultural land in relation to its population growth.

• Glenn County appears to be demonstrating an excessive agricultural land loss when compared to its population growth.