Land Classification: Use, Cover and Capability Explained

Land classification sorts land into groups so that people can count it, map it, plan it and tax it. There are three common ways to do it: by what covers the land, by what people do on it, and by how well it can be farmed. The United States shows why the difference matters. The 2022 National Resources Inventory counts about 1.94 billion acres of land and water, and about 70% of that is non-Federal rural land. On that rural land, forest covers 421.5 million acres, rangeland 399.7 million and cropland 364.3 million (USDA NRCS, 2025).

This guide explains the classification of land by cover, by use and by utility, the systems that governments run in the USA, Canada, England, New Zealand and Europe, and what they are used for. It ends with a calculator for farmland tax assessment and a short guide to finding the class of your own land.

Three ways to classify land

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) keeps the first two ideas apart. Land cover is the observed physical cover on the earth’s surface. Land use is the set of activities and inputs people apply to a cover type to produce, change or maintain it. The FAO gives a plain example: “grassland” is a cover term, while “rangeland” describes a use of that grass (FAO Land Cover Classification System manual).

The third idea is capability, which many textbooks call land utility. It does not describe what is on the land today. It grades what the land could do, given its soil, slope, wetness and climate. A field of corn and a field of brush can have the same capability class, and two cornfields can have different ones.

The three answers can disagree. A wheat field is cropland by cover and use, and it can be capability class II or class VI. The FAO notes that many classifications confuse the first two.

▶ Why land classification matters for the environment, the economy and everyday life. · 20:06

Classification of land based on uses

Use classes group land by its main function. In 1976 the US Geological Survey (USGS) published a land use and land cover system that later maps build on. It has nine Level I classes: urban or built-up land, agricultural land, rangeland, forest land, water, wetland, barren land, tundra, and perennial snow or ice. Level II splits each one. Urban land, for example, is split into residential, commercial and services, industrial, transport and utilities, and other types (USGS Professional Paper 964).

The USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) keeps a second national list. Its Major Land Uses series has sorted US land into seven categories since 1948: cropland, grassland pasture and range, forest-use land, special use land, urban land, miscellaneous land and the total. It is updated every five years with the Census of Agriculture (USDA ERS, Major Land Uses).

A common textbook grouping of use classes, as seen on farm maps and county plans, is:

• Agricultural land: cropland, pasture, orchards, vineyards and nurseries.
• Residential land: housing, from city apartments to rural homes.
• Commercial and industrial land: shops, offices, factories, warehouses, mines and quarries.
• Transport land: roads, railways, airports and ports.
• Recreation and conservation land: parks, sports grounds, nature reserves and protected forests.
• Public-service land: schools, hospitals and government buildings. Zoning codes often give these their own zone, and the names differ by place.

Land cover maps

Cover maps are built from satellite images. The US National Land Cover Database (NLCD) uses a legend modified from the same USGS system. It lists 20 classes, from open water and four levels of developed land to deciduous forest, pasture and hay, cultivated crops and woody wetlands. Four of them are used in Alaska only (MRLC, NLCD class legend). In Europe, CORINE Land Cover offers 44 classes, ranging from broad forests to individual vineyards, with new status and change layers every six years (Copernicus Land Monitoring Service).

How US land is split

The 2022 National Resources Inventory sorts non-Federal rural land and developed land by cover and use. The chart shows how the acres divide. It leaves out Federal land, which was 406 million acres, and water.

Chart

How US land was used and covered in 2022

Million acres, non-Federal land only

How the world’s land is split

The same exercise worldwide uses three broad groups: agricultural land, forest and other land. In 2020 the world’s agricultural land covered 4.74 billion hectares, of which 3.18 billion were permanent meadows and pastures and 1.56 billion were cropland (FAO Statistical Yearbook, 2022).

The share of land that is agricultural differs by region. In 2020 it was 54% in Asia, 43% in Oceania, 38% in Africa, 29% in the Americas and 21% in Europe. Europe also had the largest forest share, at 46% of its land (FAO, 2022).

Chart

Share of land that is agricultural, 2020

Percent of land area, by region

Classification of land based on utility

Utility, or capability, classification asks what the land can do. A common textbook grouping sorts land as productive, protective, built-up, barren and water. Agencies that advise farmers and planners use finer grades based on soil survey data. Each grade describes how strong the limits are, so a lower grade means more limits and a narrower choice of crops.

The main national systems

The USDA groups soils into eight capability classes from I to VIII, based on soil limits, the risk of damage and how soils respond to treatment when used for cropland. Class I soils have the fewest limits. The NRCS irrigation guide says land used for irrigation and continuous row crops is best suited to Class I to III soils (USDA NRCS, National Engineering Handbook Part 652).

Canada’s Land Inventory groups mineral soils into 7 classes and 13 subclasses by their potential for field crops. The classes show how intense the limits are, not what kind of limit they are. Classes 6 and 7 do not warrant irrigation, because the gain would be negligible (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, CLI). British Columbia’s Agricultural Land Commission also describes seven classes, from Class 1 for the widest crop range to Class 7 for non-arable land (Agricultural Land Commission).

England grades farmland into five grades. Grade 3 is split into 3a and 3b. Planning policy defines grades 1, 2 and 3a as the best and most versatile land. Natural England estimated in 2012 that grades 1 and 2 together make up about 21% of English farmland, and subgrade 3a covers about 21% as well (Natural England, TIN049). New Zealand’s Land Use Capability system has eight classes, with the limits rising and the versatility falling from class 1 up (Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research).

Capability versus suitability

Capability grades land for general farm use. Suitability grades it for one named use, such as a single crop. The FAO framework for land evaluation names suitable classes S1, S2 and so on for a stated use, where S1 is highly suitable land with no significant limits for that use. It says five classes should probably be the most ever used (FAO Soils Bulletin 32).

▶ A walk through land cover classification and the main farm land types. · 8:53

How governments use land classification

Classes are not only for maps. They set rules, taxes and priorities.

• Property tax. All 50 US states give farmland some form of preferential tax treatment, and most do it through use-value assessment (as reported in 2014). Land is then taxed on what it can earn from farming, not on its full market value (University of Illinois, PolicyMatters). In the Indiana method described in a 2012 paper, a base rate is multiplied by a soil productivity factor and an influence factor for features that reduce productivity (Anderson, 2012).
• Planning. In England, Natural England uses the grades to advise planning authorities, developers and the public when development is proposed on farmland. Canada’s capability maps are used for land-use plans and land assessments (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, above).
• Irrigation and conservation. The class tells an agency which soils suit irrigation or row crops and which should stay in grass or trees.
• Statistics. National land-use series from the USDA count how much land is cropland, pasture, forest or built-up, and how those totals change.

Rules differ by state, county and country. For tax, legal or planning decisions, check with your county assessor or planning office and get professional advice.

Check what use-value assessment could save

If your state assesses farmland at use value, the gap between use value and market value drives your tax saving. The calculator below shows the size of that gap for your acres.

Try the numbers for your own farm below.

What changes land classes over time

Classes are not fixed. Land moves between uses as cities grow, as farm programmes change and as owners switch crops. The National Resources Inventory shows the scale in the USA. About 48 million acres were developed between 1982 and 2022, bringing developed land to about 120 million acres, a 66% increase. Cropland rose by about 4 million acres between 2012 and 2018, after a long decline from 1982 to 2007. By 2022 it stood at about 364.3 million acres, slightly below 365 million in 2017. About 73% of the land that became cropland between 2017 and 2022 had been pasture in 2017 (USDA NRCS, 2025).

The dumbbell chart compares 1982 and 2022 for the main NRI categories. Cropland and rangeland shrank, forest grew a little and developed land grew by two thirds.

Farm programmes move land between classes too. Acreage in the General Conservation Reserve Program fell about 34% between 2017 and 2022, from 16 to 10 million acres. Over half of it became cropland and about a third became pastureland (USDA NRCS, 2025). The same report says soil erosion rates on cropland fell 34% between 1982 and 2022, so a map of cropland alone does not show how well that land is being kept.

Other pressures on classification include land degradation, floods and drought, and the way two agencies can define the same word differently. Keep the date of any map you use, because a map from ten years ago may show a different cover.

Chart

US land by use, 1982 and 2022

Million acres, non-Federal land

Land classification from satellites

Satellites make land-cover classification repeatable. USDA’s Cropland Data Layer maps crop types across the continental United States each year from satellite images. Since 2024 it has a 10-metre resolution, and the 2008 to 2023 versions are at 30 metres. The programme uses Landsat 8 and 9 and Sentinel-2 images collected through the growing season (USDA NASS, Cropland Data Layer FAQ). A 2020 study found a global median revisit interval of 2.3 days when four of these satellites are combined, though clouds reduce the number of usable views (Li and Chen, Sensors, 2020).

Satellites map cover, and they show how crops and fields change from week to week. They do not give a capability class. That comes from soil survey and field checks. Radar satellites can see through cloud, which the video below explains.

Farmonaut Satellite + AI Farm Monitoring System shows vegetation maps of your own fields in the Farmonaut app, on web, Android and iOS. A patch that behaves differently from the rest of the field is a reason to take a soil sample there. Developers can read the API and the Satellite Weather API documentation to bring field data into their own tools.

▶ Can satellites see through clouds? How radar imagery helps. · 2:37

Why land numbers differ between sources

Two agencies can both be right and still report different totals. In 2022 the Census of Agriculture counted 382 million acres of cropland on farms and 393 million acres of permanent pasture (USDA NASS, Census of Agriculture highlights). The National Resources Inventory counted 364.3 million acres of cropland, 125.4 million of pastureland and 399.7 million of rangeland on non-Federal rural land. One reports what farm operators say, the other samples sites on the ground. The two also draw the line between pasture and range in different places.

Check three things before you compare a number: who counted, what the category includes, and which year it describes.

How to find the class of your own land

1. Outline your land. In the USA, open the Web Soil Survey from the NRCS and draw your area of interest. Soil maps and data cover more than 95% of US counties (USDA NRCS, Web Soil Survey).
2. Read the soil report. It lists each soil unit, its slope and its capability class.
3. Check local maps. Look for zoning, land-cover and tax records at your county. In England, the Agricultural Land Classification maps are held by Natural England.
4. Ask for a field check. A soil specialist can grade a single site. The NRCS says on-site investigation is needed for some uses.
5. Keep your records. Note the class, the source and the date, so you can show them to a buyer, lender or assessor.

Related pages on our site: land classification, land use types, land use planning, agricultural land management, soil erosion control, crop monitoring tutorial, precision farming in Australia, agricultural applications.

FAQ

What is land classification?

It is the sorting of land into groups by cover, use or capability. Cover says what is on the surface, use says what people do on it, and capability grades how well it can be farmed. Each question has its own systems and its own maps.

What are the main types of land use?

The USGS system has nine Level I classes: urban or built-up, agricultural, rangeland, forest, water, wetland, barren, tundra, and perennial snow or ice (USGS Professional Paper 964). The USDA ERS Major Land Uses series uses seven categories: total land, cropland, grassland pasture and range, forest-use land, special use land, urban land and miscellaneous land.

What is the difference between land use and land cover?

Land cover is what is on the surface, such as grass, trees or buildings. Land use is what people do with it, such as grazing or recreation. One cover can serve several uses (FAO Land Cover Classification System manual).

What are the classes of land by capability?

The USDA uses classes I to VIII, Canada uses 1 to 7, New Zealand uses 1 to 8 and England uses grades 1 to 5. In each, the top class has the fewest limits for farming.

Can satellites classify land?

Satellites map land cover well and can show change over time. They cannot give a capability class on their own, because that needs soil survey data and field checks.

Who uses land classification?

Farmers, tax assessors, planners, conservation agencies and statistics offices. Property tax on farmland, planning decisions and national land-use statistics all depend on it. Get local advice before you act on a class for tax or legal reasons.