Historical maps of land use in Puerto Rico in 1951

This data publication contains multiple maps of Puerto Rico scanned at 600 dots per inch: full map scans, scans clipped to mapped areas only, and georeferenced scans of 1:10,000-scale land-use maps from 1950-1951 that were produced by the Rural Land Classification Program of Puerto Rico, a project led by Dr. Clarence F. Jones of Northwestern University. These historical maps classified land use and land cover into 20 different classes, including 13 different types of crops, two classes of forests, four classes of grasslands and other areas, which is a general class for non-rural areas. This package includes maps from 76 out of the 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico, covering 422 quadrangles of a 443-quadrangle grid for mainland Puerto Rico. It excludes the island municipalities of Vieques and Culebra, Mona Island and minor outlying islands.
The Rural Land Classification Program of Puerto Rico produced 430 1:10,000-scale maps. That program also produced one island-wide land-use map with more generalized delineations of land use. Previously, Kennaway and Helmer (2007) scanned and georeferenced the island-wide map, and they converted it to vector and raster formats with embedded georeferencing and classification. This data publication contains the higher-resolution maps, which will provide more precise historical context for forests. It will better inform management efforts for the sustainable use of forest lands and to build resilience and resistance to various future disturbances for these and other tropical forest landscapes. The maps were scanned and georeferenced to help with the planning and application process for the USDA Forest Service (USDA) Forest Legacy Program, a competition-based program administered by the USDA Forest Service in partnership with State agencies to encourage the protection of privately owned forest lands through conservation easements or land purchases. Geospatial products and maps will also be used by personnel at the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources and partners in Non-Governmental Organizations working with the Forest Stewardship Program. This latter program provides technical assistance and forest management plans to private landowners for the conservation and effective management of private forests across the US. The information will provide local historical context on forest change patterns that will enhance the recommendations of forest management practices for private forest landowners. These data will also be useful for urban forest professionals to understand the land legacies as a basis for planning green infrastructure interventions. Data depict the rural areas of Puerto Rico around 1951 and how they were classified by geographers then. Having it georeferenced allows managers, teachers, students, the public and scientists to compare how these classifications have changed throughout the years. It will allow more precise identification and mapping of the past land use of present forests, forest stand age, and the past juxtaposition of different land uses relative to each other. These factors can affect forest species composition, biodiversity and ecosystem services. Forest stand age, past land-use type and past disturbance type, forest example, help gauge current forest structure, carbon storage, or rates of carbon accumulation. Another example of how the maps are important is for understanding how watersheds have changed through time, which helps assess how forest ecosystem services related to hydrology evolve. These maps will also help gauge how the forests of Puerto Rico are responding to recent disturbances, and how past disturbances over a range of scales relate to these responses.
For more information on the Rural Land Classification Program of Puerto Rico, generated maps, and the island-wide land-use map, please see Jones (1952), Jones and Berrios (1956), as well as Kennaway and Helmer (2007).