Excerpts from the report Introduction: United States Department of Agriculture Handbook 296 is a broadscale synthesis of current knowledge about land areas based on patterns of physiography, geology, climate, water resources, soils, biological resources, and land use. These patterns were used to establish the unique central concept and boundaries for each land resource region (LRR) and major land resource area (MLRA). This handbook is designed primarily for use in developing soil and water conservation programs at the continental scale (using the LRR concept) and the inter-State scale (using the MLRA concept). The three previous editions of Agriculture Handbook 296 were published in 1965, 1981, and 2006. This update of Agriculture Handbook 296 was driven by the need to improve the usability of the land resource hierarchy system so that a more consistent application of soil-ecological-landscape concepts could provide more accurate and efficient application of conservation on the ground. It involved innovations to the current system through incorporation of updated climate, elevation, soil, and land use data and improvement in linework accuracy based on advances in remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS).