Texas Land Trends

Texas is comprised of 142 million acres of private farms, ranches and forests, leading the nation in land area devoted to privately owned working lands. These lands provide substantial economic, environmental and recreational resources that benefit all Texans.

Rapid population growth is driving suburbanization, rural development and ownership fragmentation that increasingly threatens working lands. These threats result in a fundamental change in the Texas landscape, impacting:

• rural economies,
• food and water security and
• conservation of natural resources.

The Texas Land Trends project monitors the status and changes in land use, ownership size and land values of working lands. Research results are published as topic-based reports through the txlandtrends.org, an award-winning interactive website. Users can also explore and query the Texas Land Trends data through the web-based mapping service. Texas Land Trends provides decision-makers and stakeholders with timely information to support the conservation and strategic planning of working lands within a spatially explicit context. Here's a preview of a few tools we've developed through the Texas Land Trends GIS project:

Data Explorer

• This tool allows users to curate land trend data based on their area or areas of interest. Custom data queries by users generate an output of summary statistics, which demonstrate land demographic data in three primary categories: land use, land values, and ownership. These data are displayed through interactive mapping, tables, graphs, and general text to allow unique visualization of occurring changes on the selected areas of interest.

 

Texas Early Notification Tool (TENT)

• This tool allows users to create custom queries based on their area or areas of interest. If the area selected intersects a military asset notification area that warrants early notification, the tool will generate an output with the notification areas and associated point of contact information. These data are displayed through interactive mapping, tables, and general text.

 

Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program (REPI)

• This tool provides users with GIS locations of all military installations nationwide with completed REPI transactions, along with relevant information and resources for these projects such as economic data and project profile pages. Custom query feature allows users to pull REPI data for multiple installations at the local-, state-, and regional-level.

 

TxMAP — 

• We developed a web mapping application that allows users to view and map natural resource data, and then publish a summary report on an area of interest. TxMAP enables users, such as private landowners, to define an area to perform an intersect query based on user input of geospatial data layers. The data is grouped into categories, matching our program areas of Wildlife Conservation, Rural Land Trends, Military Sustainability and Private Land Stewardship. The tool produces a report that includes maps and relevant information for the landowner to use in property management plans.

 

About the Texas Land Trends Data:

The Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute’s (NRI) Texas Land Trends project informs private and public decision-makers about the status and trends of our state’s working lands through the detailed curation and combination of multiple statewide datasets. It is NRI’s policy to operate this project based on scientifically and statistically developed principles and protocols. Inherent to this policy is our necessity to maintain and protect the integrity, validity, and security of our data, analyses, and processes.

NRI has dedicated significant resources to develop the methodology used to create our Texas Land Trends database, and do not share shapefiles or raw data with external entities. However, public usability and access to this data is a cornerstone of Texas Land Trends, leading to the creation of our innovative Data Explorer tool. Users can explore specific areas of interest (e.g., counties or ecoregions) or view statewide trends, with results presented through tables, charts, graphs, and maps alongside informative text to help explain common trends. This web tool allows users to visualize the data and even download select graphics. See our About the Data page for all data sources and descriptions.