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000055 -7- use conversion into the 1980s by use of air photos. If the rates of land use conversion per capita observed between 1960 and 1970 still reflect land conversion rates, then about 17,340 acres in the three counties should have been converted to urban uses between 1970 and 1982. TIlis estimate is made up of 173,400 additional people in the area times .10 acre per capita in- crease. Boulder County should have converted 7,150 acres to urban use.; Lar- imer County, 6,510 acres; and Weld County, 3,680 acres. To check on these land conversion data we have examined rural sub- division activity and annexations to cities and towns. Actual land use change in the rural areas and around cities and towns is preceded by platting of subdivisions and annexations by cities so we would expect some conversion ~lead of actual occupancy for urban use. Rural Subdivisions One of the remarkable changes in land use in the three-county area has been the proliferation of residential subdivisions in the rural irrigated areas of the counties and in the mountainous areas of Boulder and Larimer counties. The progression of these can be seen in the series of maps shown in figures 1, 2 and 3. Hountainous subdivisions have not been given special attention. They are noted in table 5 so that the data are complete through 1972. After 1972, mountain subdivision activity slowed and from then on these subdivisions were not treated separately. Attention has been given chiefly to flatland subdivision. Rural subdivision activity grew rapidly during the mid-1960s in response to population growth and the concomitant development of rural-domestic water systems that were formed as a result of a Farmers Home Administration program