Idle Rural Land Phenomena in Madison County, Georgia: (Originally published in Southeastern Geographer, 1:39–49.)

That large amounts of idle rural land have appeared in recent years throughout the southern Piedmont and coastal plains is known to most students of these areas. The present discussion reports findings from an investigation of idle land phenomena in a representative rural Piedmont county, and preliminary conclusions therefrom. The investigation continues.

Madison County is situated in the eastern central Georgia Piedmont (Figure 1). It was selected as the areal unit for this investigation for several reasons. (1) The county is a reasonably representative segment of the southern Piedmont in terms of its terrain, soils, and land use history. (2) Madison County has been readily accessible to the investigator; proximity has facilitated virtually continuous observation. (3) It is preeminently rural. It was deemed essential to select a clearly rural area for analysis in order to eliminate the effects of rural-urban fringe phenomena associated with cities of even moderate size. Madison County met these conditions; in 1950 its villages and small towns together accounted for only 2,254 of the total 12,238 residents and its farm and rural non-farm population together amounted to almost five-sixths of the inhabitants.

Obviously criteria for recognition of bona fide idle land have been essential. As employed herein, rural idle land refers to any rural area that has been cultivated previously but is not now (i.e., at time of observation) in use for any agricultural, pastoral, or residential purpose and which does not support forest growth of even potentially merchantable quality or volume—no matter how young. Length of time since the last cultivation may have been one or ten years, i.e., is irrelevant, but highly relevant is the fact that the land use immediately prior to idleness must have been either cropland or pasturage. “Old fields”—areas formerly cultivated but now clearly reverting to forest—are eliminated as are also areas of cutover farm and non-farm forest which now support a few “seed” trees plus a dominant cover of bush and brush. These criteria obviously rest upon a morphographic basis: the contemporary appearance of the individual land unit and field interpretation of same.

It has been established that broomsedge (bromus latiglumis) occurs prominently in the vegetative cover of idle land plots on the southern Piedmont.¹ This condition suggested the interesting possibility of a distinctive gray-scale recording of broomsedge

Figure 1.

on aerial photos, particularly since U.S.D.A. photography customarily is exposed during the winter season. Checks of selected “test” plots both in the field and on aerial photography revealed that broomsedge actually did create a distinctive gray photo tone. By extending this “find,” Tyner developed photo-interpretation keys for identification of idle rural land in the Madison County area.² Broomsedge was found to be the common denominator in the vegetative cover of the idle tracts, each of which exhibited vegetative “complexes” which rendered distinctive images on aerial photos. The cover “complexes” customarily involved setaria, pluchea camphorate and andropogon scaparius in varying quantities in addition to the broomsedge, plus minor quantities of other herbaceous plants. Four classes, or keys, of idle land cover were established by Tyner on the basis of photographic tone and textural differences as related to observed variations in the vegetative cover in the field (Figure 2). In general, the longer any given plot had been idle the coarser the texture of its photo image because of a progressive buildup in the proportions of coarser, brownish, plants that it supported—such as the broomsedge and setaria with brush.

Figure 2.

A fifth photographic key became necessary: one which recognized incipient natural restocking by pines. Idle units of this type were those in which the beginnings of the “old field” pie succession were in evidence. If 15 per cent. or more, of such an area was occupied by the crowns of young pines and associated brush, the area was considered potential timberland and therefore not idle. Conversely, those areas wherein less than 15...