Forest Land Parcelization in Northern Minnesota: A Multicounty Assessment

Abstract

Parcelization, the subdivision of land into smaller ownership parcels, is a phenomenon affecting private forest land across the nation, including Minnesota. Forest land parcelization has been found to have a marked adverse effect on wildlife habitat, timber availability, water quality, and recreational access. In 2005, the Minnesota Forest Resources Council (MFRC) identified forest parcelization as the single most important policy issue affecting the economic and ecological health of the state’s forests. This report describes an assessment of forest land parcelization across a ten county region of northern Minnesota. Using ArcMap as the primary data management and analysis tool, digital files containing the boundaries of all real estate parcels in the ten county study area were analyzed to characterize parcelization activity across private forested landscapes in northern Minnesota. Regression analysis was subsequently used to identify parcel and landscape characteristics that are associated with a parcelized forest landscape. A new metric for characterizing a parcelized forest landscape is proposed to address the deficiencies associated with using average parcel size to describe forest land parcelization. This new metric uses average parcel size, but takes into account the spatial extent of the private forested landscape as well as the distribution of private forest parcel size across this landscape. The study’s large spatial scale makes it unique among forest land parcelization studies.