FOREST AREA: Table 1 - 4

Table 1 partitions forest land area by FIA Forest Survey Unit and major forest land-use class.  Timberland is forest that is sufficiently productive and presumably available for harvest of timber at some time in the future when the owner chooses to do so.  Reserved forest refers to those acres formally withdrawn by statute, administrative rule, etc. from timber utilization.  The majority of Reserved forest occurs in the Voyageurs National Park and Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness within the Aspen Birch Unit.  Other forest land is that which is unproductive and/or uneconomic for various reasons.  This land is not formally withdrawn from timber harvest and utilization, but such use is unlikely.
Timberland actually available for harvest is not identified by the FIA.  However, many acres have become essentially unavailable for harvest through owner intent, informally or formally.   For example, the classification of land in management plans into very restrictive access and use categories.  Such restriction is most common on public lands.

Similar to Table 1, Table 2 partitions forest land area into four general categories of ownership.  Private ownership includes industrial and nonindustrial private forest and tribal lands.  This category of ownership controls 45.8% of the state's timberland.  The state and county administrates the second largest area of timberland covering 40.6% of the forest landscape.  Again, as shown in Table 2, National Forest controls the largest portion of forest land designated as Reserved.

Table 3 partitions forest land area by forest type in thousands of acres.  Five million acres of forest land area in Minnesota is dominated by aspen forest type, which is approximately 31.9% of the total forest land area.

Table 4 presents the approximate number of FIA field sample plots that fall within each forest land-use class for each forest type  Note that a plot is actually a 4-subplot cluster.  This table is particularly important because it suggests the amount of confidence that can be placed on forest type estimates of area and volume.  For instance, with 2,173 of the total 6,942 plots in the inventory, we have a high degree of confidence in estimates made for the aspen forest type.

In contrast, with only 51 plots falling within the white pine forest type, we place little confidence in these area and timber volume estimates.  Note, because plots are comprised of four subplots, it is possible for a single plot to represent multiple conditions and appear under more than one forest type.  Thus, the total number of plots for each column is slightly inflated.