Vermont, 1796 Raster Image

This layer is a digitized geo-referenced raster image of a 1796 map of Vermont drawn by D.F. Sotzmann. These Sotzmann maps (10 maps of New England and Mid-Atlantic states) typically portray both natural and manmade features. They are highly detailed with symbols for churches, roads, court houses, distilleries, iron works, mills, academies, county lines, town lines, and more. Relief is usually indicated by hachures and country boundaries have also been drawn. Place names are shown in both German and English and each map usually includes an index to land grants. Prime meridians used for this series are Greenwich and Washington, D.C.

Massachusetts, 1797 Raster Image

This layer is a digitized geo-referenced raster image of a 1797 map of Massachusetts drawn by D.F. Sotzmann. These Sotzmann maps (10 maps of New England and Mid-Atlantic states) typically portray both natural and manmade features. They are highly detailed with symbols for churches, roads, court houses, distilleries, iron works, mills, academies, county lines, town lines, and more. Relief is usually indicated by hachures and country boundaries have also been drawn. Place names are shown in both German and English and each map usually includes an index to land grants. Prime meridians used for this series are Greenwich and Washington, D.C.

Rhode Island, 1797 Raster Image

This layer is a digitized geo-referenced raster image of a 1797 map of Rhode Island drawn by D.F. Sotzmann. These Sotzmann maps (10 maps of New England and Mid-Atlantic states) typically portray both natural and manmade features. They are highly detailed with symbols for churches, roads, court houses, distilleries, iron works, mills, academies, county lines, town lines, and more. Relief is usually indicated by hachures and country boundaries have also been drawn. Place names are shown in both German and English and each map usually includes an index to land grants. Prime meridians used for this series are Greenwich and Washington, D.C.

Connecticut, 1796 Raster Image

This layer is a digitized geo-referenced raster image of a 1796 map of Connecticut drawn by D.F. Sotzmann. These Sotzmann maps (10 maps of New England and Mid-Atlantic states) typically portray both natural and manmade features. They are highly detailed with symbols for churches, roads, court houses, distilleries, iron works, mills, academies, county lines, town lines, and more. Relief is usually indicated by hachures and country boundaries have also been drawn. Place names are shown in both German and English and each map usually includes an index to land grants. Prime meridians used for this series are Greenwich and Washington, D.C.

New York, 1799 Raster Image

This layer is a digitized geo-referenced raster image of a 1799 map of New York drawn by D.F. Sotzmann. These Sotzmann maps (10 maps of New England and Mid-Atlantic states) typically portray both natural and manmade features. They are highly detailed with symbols for churches, roads, court houses, distilleries, iron works, mills, academies, county lines, town lines, and more. Relief is usually indicated by hachures and country boundaries have also been drawn. Place names are shown in both German and English and each map usually includes an index to land grants. Prime meridians used for this series are Greenwich and Washington, D.C.

Pennsylvania, 1797 Raster Image

This layer is a digitized geo-referenced raster image of a 1797 map of Pennsylvania drawn by D.F. Sotzmann. These Sotzmann maps (10 maps of New England and Mid-Atlantic states) typically portray both natural and manmade features. They are highly detailed with symbols for churches, roads, court houses, distilleries, iron works, mills, academies, county lines, town lines, and more. Relief is usually indicated by hachures and country boundaries have also been drawn. Place names are shown in both German and English and each map usually includes an index to land grants. Prime meridians used for this series are Greenwich and Washington, D.C.

Maryland and Delaware, 1797 Raster Image

This layer is a digitized geo-referenced raster image of a 1797 map of Maryland and Delaware drawn by D.F. Sotzmann. These Sotzmann maps (10 maps of New England and Mid-Atlantic states) typically portray both natural and manmade features. They are highly detailed with symbols for churches, roads, court houses, distilleries, iron works, mills, academies, county lines, town lines, and more. Relief is usually indicated by hachures and country boundaries have also been drawn. Place names are shown in both German and English and each map usually includes an index to land grants. Prime meridians used for this series are Greenwich and Washington, D.C.

Nantucket, Massachusetts, 1869 (Raster Image)

This layer is a georeferenced raster image of the historic paper map entitled: Historical map of Nantucket, surveyed and drawn by the Rev. F.C. Ever, D.D. It was published by The Major & Knapp Eng. Mfg. & Lith. Co. in 1869. Scale [1:26,720]. The image inside the map neatline is georeferenced to the surface of the earth and fit to the Massachusetts State Plane Coordinate System, Mainland Zone (in Feet) (Fipszone 2001). All map collar and inset information is also available as part of the raster image, including any inset maps, profiles, statistical tables, directories, text, illustrations, or other information associated with the principal map. This map shows features such as roads, drainage, Native American village and burial ground sites, historic sites, and more. It indicates boundaries of surveyed sections and of the Ancient Sachem Rights. Relief is shown by hachures. Includes historical notes and lists of historical dates and events for the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries; latest date, 1865. This layer is part of a selection of digitally scanned and georeferenced historic maps of Massachusetts from the Harvard Map Collection. These maps typically portray both natural and manmade features. The selection represents a range of regions, originators, ground condition dates (1755-1922), scales, and purposes. The digitized selection includes maps of: the state, Massachusetts counties, town surveys, coastal features, real property, parks, cemeteries, railroads, roads, public works projects, etc.

New Jersey, 1797 Raster Image

This layer is a digitized geo-referenced raster image of a 1797 map of New Jersey drawn by D.F. Sotzmann. These Sotzmann maps (10 maps of New England and Mid-Atlantic states) typically portray both natural and manmade features. They are highly detailed with symbols for churches, roads, court houses, distilleries, iron works, mills, academies, county lines, town lines, and more. Relief is usually indicated by hachures and country boundaries have also been drawn. Place names are shown in both German and English and each map usually includes an index to land grants. Prime meridians used for this series are Greenwich and Washington, D.C.

Agricultural Land Markets and Land Leasing in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 11, February 2012

The aim of this Factor Markets Working Paper is to identify the driving forces that shape agricultural land structures, land market and land leasing in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Institutional developments and land reforms have so far been modest in the FYROM, and have not contributed to significant changes in agricultural ownership, operational structures, or land market and land leasing arrangements. Land ownership and land use are bimodal, consisting of several small-scale family farms and a few large-scale agricultural enterprises. The small family farms own and operate land on several small parcels, which is one of the major obstacles to the modernisation of family farm production. A considerable portion of the land is uncultivated, which affects land market and land leasing values. Due to underdeveloped institutional frameworks and market institutions in support of small-scale farms, a large proportion of state-owned land is rented by agricultural enterprises.

Institutional Factors Affecting Agricultural Land Markets. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 16, February 2012

This paper analyses the main institutional factors affecting the rental and sales markets for agricultural land. Particular attention is paid to the effects of the common agricultural policy on land markets, and more specifically the underlying mechanism through which agricultural subsidies are capitalised into land values and farmland rents. This paper also provides a broad overview of the empirical studies that estimate the impact of agricultural support policies on land rents and land prices. Various other fundamental factors that affect agricultural land markets are discussed, such as land market institutions and regulations, transaction costs, credit market constraints and levels of profitability, the legal means of contract enforcement and land use alternatives.

Influence of the Common Agricultural Policy and Heterogeneous Land Quality on Land Rent and Land Allocation. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 38, March 2013

Against the background of the current discussion about the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) after 2013, the question of the impact of government support on land prices is crucially important. Validation of the CAP’s success also hinges on a proper assessment of a choice of policy instruments. This study therefore has the objective of investigating on a theoretical basis the effects of different government support measures on land rental prices and land allocation. The different measures under consideration are the price support, area payments and decoupled single farm payments (SFPs) of the CAP. Our approach evaluates the potential impact of each measure based on a Ricardian land rent model with heterogeneous land quality and multiple land uses. We start with a simple model of one output and two inputs, where a Cobb-Douglas production technology is assumed between the two factors of land and non-land inputs. In a second step, an outside option is introduced. This outside option, as opposed to land use of the Ricardian type, is independent of land quality. The results show that area payments and SFPs become fully capitalised into land rents, whereas in a price support scheme the capitalisation depends on per-acreage productivity. Moreover, in a price support scheme and a historical model, the capitalisation is positively influenced by land quality. Both area payments and price supports influence land allocation across different uses compared with no subsidies, where the shift tends to be larger in an area payment scheme than in a price support scheme. By contrast, SFPs do not influence land allocation.

Will improved access to capital dampen the need for more agricultural land? A CGE analysis of agricultural capital markets and world-wide biofuel policies. Factor Markets Working Paper No. 48, May 2013

This paper analyses the consequences of enhanced biofuel production in regions and countries of the world that have announced plans to implement or expand on biofuel policies. The analysis considers biofuel policies implemented as binding blending targets for transportation fuels. The chosen quantitative modelling approach is two-fold: it combines the analysis of biofuel policies in a multi-sectoral economic model (MAGNET) with systematic variation of the functioning of capital and labour markets. This paper adds to existing research by considering biofuel policies in the EU, the US and various other countries with considerable agricultural production and trade, such as Brazil, India and China. Moreover, the application multi-sectoral modelling system with different assumptions on the mobility of factor markets allows for the observation of changes in economic indicators under different conditions of how factor markets work. Systematic variation of factor mobility indicates that the ‘burden’ of global biofuel policies is not equally distributed across different factors within agricultural production. Agricultural land, as the pre-dominant and sector-specific factor, is, regardless of different degrees of inter-sectoral or intra-sectoral factor mobility, the most important factor limiting the expansion of agricultural production. More capital and higher employment in agriculture will ease the pressure on additional land use – but only partly. To expand agricultural production at global scale requires both land and mobile factors adapted to increase total factor productivity in agriculture in the most efficient way.

Maps (pdf) and raster images (tif) of predicted rural land cover suitability under current (2010) conditions and future climate scenarios

This study projects land cover probabilities under climate change for corn (maize), soybeans, spring and winter wheat, winter wheat-soybean double cropping, cotton, grassland and forest across 16 central U.S. states at a high spatial resolution, while also taking into account the influence of soil characteristics and topography. The scenarios span three oceanic-atmospheric global circulation models, three Representative Concentration Pathways, and three time periods (2040, 2070, 2100). As climate change intensifies, the suitable area for all six crops display large northward shifts. Total suitable area for spring wheat, followed by corn and soybeans, diminish. Suitable area for winter wheat and for winter wheat-soybean double-cropping expand northward, while cotton suitability migrates to new, more northerly, locations. Suitability for forest intensifies in the south while yielding to crops in the north; grassland intensifies in the western Great Plains as crop suitability diminishes. To maintain current broad geographic patterns of land use, large changes in the thermal response of crops such as corn would be required. A transition from corn-soybean to winter wheat-soybean doubling cropping is an alternative adaptation.