Land-use changes in Illinois, USA: The influence of landscape attributes on current and historic land use

The Illinois Geographic Information System was used to compare the soil and landscape attributes of the State with its historic vegetation, current land use, and patterns of land-use change over the past 160 years. Patch structural characteristics among land types in four geographic zones were also compared. The assessment of patch characteristics revealed a highly modified State with most land patches controlled by human influences and relatively few by topographic and hydrologic features. Correlation and regression analyses determined the relationships of land type and abundance within each of 50 general soil associations to properties of the soil associations typically slope, texture, organic matter, productivity index, and available waterholding capacity. The distribution of the historic vegetation of the State and its current deciduous forests and nonforested wetlands related moderately (r2 2 0.44) to various landscape attributes. Urban and other highly modified land types were less closely related.