Regional Comparisons Help
Table of Contents
Navigation Overview
When you first visit the Regional Comparisons, the following map display will appear.
There are several different types of regions you can make comparisons between—Counties, River Basins, Ecoregions, and Areas. You can choose up to 3 regions to compare in any combination of region type.
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Counties - Summarized by county.
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River Basins - Summarized by the 23 major River Basins (listed below). River Basins do not follow county boundaries, therefore some data in this section will be missing due to the level at which it is produced, such as population.
- Brazos
- Brazos-Colorado
- Canadian
- Colorado
- Colorado-Lavaca
- Cypress
- Guadalupe
- Lavaca
- Lavaca-Guadalupe
- Neches
- Neches-Trinity
- Nueces
- Nueces-Rio Grande
- Red
- Rio Grande
- Sabine
- San Antonio
- San Antonio-Nueces
- San Jacinto
- San Jacinto-Brazos
- Sulphur
- Trinity
- Trinity-San Jacinto
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Ecoregions - Summarized by 11 ecoregions. Like river basins, ecoregions do not follow county boundaries, therefore some data will be missing due to the level at which it is produced.
- Blackland Prairie
- Coastal Sand Plain
- Edwards Plateau
- Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes
- High Plains
- Llano Uplift
- Oak Woods and Prairies
- Piney Woods
- Rolling Plains
- South Texas Brush Country
- Trans Pecos
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Areas - This region is broken into 8 categories:
- Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex - summarizes data for the DFW area, including Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Hood, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, and Wise counties.
- Greater Houston - summarizes data for Harris and its surrounding counties, including Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, and Waller.
- I-35 Corridor - summarizes data for the I-35 Corridor between San Antonio and Austin, including Bexar, Comal, Hays, Kendall, Travis, and Williamson counties.
- Rio Grande - summarizes the southern two Rio Grande counties of Cameron and Hidalgo.
- Coastal Counties - summarizes coastal counties along the Gulf of Mexico, including Aransas, Brazoria, Calhoun, Cameron, Chambers, Galveston, Harris, Jackson, Jefferson, Kenedy, Kleberg, Matagorda, Nueces, Orange, Refugio, San Patricio, Victoria, and Willacy.
- Hill Country – summarizes counties in the Edwards Plateau to include: Bandera, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Brown, Burnet, Callahan, Coke, Comal, Comanche, Concho, Coryell, Crane, Crockett, Eastland, Edwards, Gillespie, Glasscock, Hamilton, Hays, Howard, Irion, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Kinney, Lampasas, Llano, Mason, McCulloch, Medina, Menard, Midland, Mills, Mitchell, Reagan, Real, San Saba, Schleicher, Sterling, Sutton, Tom Green, Travis, Upton, Uvalde, Val Verde, Williamson.
- Western Hill Country – summarizes the counties in the western portion of the Hill Country (Coke, Crane, Crockett, Edwards, Glasscock, Howard, Irion, Kinney, Midland, Mitchell, Reagan, Schleicher, Sterling, Sutton, Tom Green, Upton, Val Verde)
- Eastern Hill Country – summarizes the counties in the eastern portion of the Hill Country (Bandera, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Brown, Burnet, Callahan, Comal, Comanche, Concho, Coryell, Eastland, Gillespie, Hamilton, Hays, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Lampasas, Llano, Mason, McCulloch, Medina, Menard, Mills, Real, San Saba, Travis, Uvalde, Williamson).
Step 1: Select Regions to Compare
The default screen prompts you to enter Region 1. It is highlighted in yellow. You can either select a county (which is the default type) or select one of the other types for your first region.
Once you’ve selected a region type, the map will update. Click on the map to select Region 1. The region you’ve chosen will be populated in the box below the button and the “highlighting” will move to Region 2. Continue selecting regions until you have up to 3 selected. You may go back at any point and re-select a region by clicking the Region 1, 2 or 3 button and selecting a new region. Once you are done, (example below), click the Go! button.
Step 2: Selet a Comparison Metric
After clicking “Go!”, trend comparisons will prompt you to select a comparison metric: Overview (the default), Land Use, Ownership Size, Market Value, and Population.
Click the radial to the left of the comparison metric you’d like to see the comparisons for. The table will update accordingly. The table will compare the regions you selected as well as statewide values for comparison.
Overview
The overview table provides a general summary of all the comparison metrics in one table: Land Use, Ownership Size, Market Value, and Population. To see more in depth information, you will need to select the actual comparison metric option.
Land use in this table is all land use types combined and is considered general open space. The table shows you what percent of the region is considered open space and the right column for each region shows the 10-year percent change from 1997-2007. Percent decreases over that 10 year period are in red, percent gains are in green.
Market value reports the average $/acre rate for land for the specified region in 2007, Ownership size gives you the average size of farms in 2007 reported in acres, and Population reports number of persons in the left columns. The right column for these metrics also give the 10 year percent change as specified above for land use. For data sources, see following sections on the specific metrics.
Because population data is reported at the county level, values will not appear for river basins and ecoregions because their boundaries do not follow county boundaries. Accurate values for those type regions could not be calculated.
Land Use Comparison Metric
The land use table shows a breakdown of land use types from the 2007 County Appraisal District data from the State Comptroller’s Office. This data is broken into 7 main categories: Irrigated Cropland, Dry Cropland, Non-Native Pasture, Native Rangeland, Wildlife Management, Forest and Other. For each region, the total acres in 2007 and the 10 year percent change trend is also shown (1997-2007 data).
In many cases, it was necessary to omit Wildlife Management from the chart due to the drastic increase of this land use.
Ownership Size Comparison Metric
The ownership size table was made using the USDA NASS Census of Agriculture 2007 data. This section looks at 5 size classes of farms: <100 acres, 100-500 acres, 500-1,000 acres, 1,000-2,000 acres, and 2,000+ acres. The table has two parts—farm count in each acre class (the top portion of the table) and total area (in acres) in each acre class (bottom portion of the table).
Farms: provides the number of farms in each size class for that region and the 10 year trend reported in either a percent increase in green or percent decrease in red.
Area: provides the total area reported (in acres) of farms in each size class for that region and the 10 year trend reported in either a percent increase in green or percent decrease in red.
Market Value Comparison Metric
The market value comparison metric was made using the County Appraisal District data from the State Comptroller’s Office. The table in this section shows the average dollar per acre value of land in the selected regions for 1997, 2002, and 2007 as well as the 10 year percent change for each region. It also displays the average value per acre for the entire state of Texas as a reference.
Population Comparison Metric
Population data was obtained at the county level from the Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS). These may vary slightly from data values in the 10 year census conducted by the US Census Bureau. TDSHS estimates were used over US Census values so that we could compare year to year with the other data in the study which was collected in years the US Census did not occur (1997, 2002, and 2007).
Due to the fact that the population data is only available at a county level, it is only included for County and Area region queries in the regional comparisons. If a river basin or ecoregion is selected there will not be a population section. This is due to the fact that the river basins and ecoregions do not follow county boundaries so there was no way to obtain accurate population values when counties were split.
The table in this section shows the population of the selected area for 1997, 2002, and 2007, along with the percent change in population from 1997 to 2007. The same population data for the entire state is also shown for reference. Population gains are reported in green and losses in red.
Exporting Tables
To pull the values from a table into an external program such as Microsoft Excel, use the cursor to select all the values in the table including the column headings.
After selecting, right click in the table and choose "Copy".
Now, you should be able to paste the data into Microsoft Excel. In any cell, right click, and choose "Paste Special".
Choose the "text" option to paste the data as regular text. The data should now show up in individual cells.
Suggested Citations
Wilkins, R. Neal, Amy G. Snelgrove, Blair C. Fitzsimons, Brent M. Stevener, Kevin L. Skow, Ross E. Anderson, Amanda M. Dube. "Texas Land Trends." Texas A&M Institute of Renewable Natural Resources. 2009. Texas A&M University.