From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters: human signature nearly ubiquitous in representative US landscapes

What landscapes best represent the land uses and land covers (LU/LC) of the continental United States? Would the set include a cornfield? A forest? A backyard? Combining principles of landscape ecology and computer science, we identified a small set of exemplar landscapes, representing distinct LU/LC pattern types of the conterminous US. We first partitioned the 1992 US National Land Cover Dataset into 193 705 landscapes, and quantified patterns with standard measures of LU/LC composition and configuration. Using the values to estimate similarity of LU/LC patterns between landscapes, we applied an algorithm developed to find representatives in large sets. In the resulting 17-member set of exemplar landscapes, patterns created and managed by human activity are by far the most evident features. This set of representatives summarizes the nation's LU/LC, demonstrating the degree to which human-influenced patterns dominate: aggregations of rectangular fields, farmlands within cleared forests, shrublands/pasture, and suburbs. The algorithm's selection of an exemplar for each group may have other ecological applications when an objectively determined subset of representative items is needed.