The Forest Resource 



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Forest Lands 



OF MINNESOTA'S 51,206,000 acres of land, 

 19,344,000 are forest land (fig. 2). Of this 

 total, 818,000 acres are unproductive for timber, and 

 428,000 acres are reserved from cutting by legislation, 

 leaving 18,098,000 acres or 35 percent of the land 

 area as commercial forest available for raising timber 

 crops (table 1). Eighty percent of the commercial 

 forest land is concentrated in the northeastern division 

 of the State (see cover), 12 percent in the southeastern 

 division, and only 8 percent in the western di\ision. 



Table 1. — Land areas, by major classes of land and geographic 

 division. .Minnfidln. 10^^ 





Total 





Division 





Class of land 



North- 

 eastern 



South- 

 eattern 



Western 



Foresi: 



Thousand 

 acres 

 18.098 



428 

 818 



Thousand 

 acres 

 14.426 



424 



768 



Thousand 

 acres 

 2,166 



2 

 24 



Thousand 

 acres 

 1. 506 



Noncommercial. 



2 



tlnproductive 2 . _. 



26 







Total . .. 



19,344 



15,618 



2,192 



1.534 







Nonforest: 3 



Farm ...... 



25,078 

 6,784 



1,996 



1,822 



6,819 

 2,049 



16,263 



Other 



2,913 







Total 



31,862 



3,818 



8.868 



19,176 







Allland. 



51.206 



19,436 ll.n/,11 



' Land in Stale parks, and Federal and State recreational reserves where cut- 

 ting of timber is prohibited by law or regulations. 



2 Poor swamp and other more or less wooded land judged incapable of producint? 

 merchantable pulpwood or sawtimber withm 100 years. It includes 7.000 

 acres withdrawn for special uses. 



5 Includes 556.200 acres of water, according to Sur\ey standards of area classi- 

 fication but defined by the Bureau of Census as land. 



Main Commercial Forests in the Xorth 



The northeastern division, consisting of 16 counties 

 extending westward from Lake Superior to the edge 

 of the prairie country and south from the Canadian 

 border to Mille Lacs Lake, is the most heavily forested 

 part of the State (fig. 3). Originally it supported as 



almost pure coniferous forest of while pine, red pine, 

 jack pine, black spruce, white spruce, balsam fir, 

 tamarack, and white cedar. Even now, 80 percent 

 of the land is forested; only 10 percent is nontinibrrcd 

 farmland (fig. 4). Logging and fires, however, have 

 drastically altered the composition of the forest and 

 the size of the timber. 



Southern and Western Forests Mostly Farm ] I 'oods 



The southeastern division, with 27 counti'^s, e.xtends 

 diagonally from Otter Tail C^ounty in the northwest 

 to Houston County in the southeastern part of the 

 State. Originally it was forested, but today it is 

 primarily a farming country with but 20 percent of 

 the land in woods (fig. 5). Conifers cover only a 

 negligible part of the forested land. 



The western division, consisting of 44 counties, has 

 only 7 percent of its land area in commercial forest. 

 \Vith few exceptions, the "forest" consists of planted 

 .sheiterbelts adjacent to farm homes or scattered 

 natural tracts along stream bottoms. A few types 

 characteristic of the northeastern forest extend into 

 the Red River \'alley. Otherwise, the natural stands 

 are hardwood. Trees generally arc short and timber 

 cjuality is poor. 



Few Sawtimber Stands Remain 



Sawtimber stands now cover only a small part of 

 the commercial forest area of the entire State. Second- 

 growth forests ranging from seedlings to pole size 

 cover nearly two-thirds of the land, while one-fourth 

 is presently deforested (table 2). 



In the northeastern division, partly because of 

 species characteristics and partly because of cutting 

 and fires, sawtimber stands cover only 7 percent of the 

 commercial forest area. In the southeastern division, 

 sawtimber occupies 34 percent, while in the western 

 division it accounts for 18 percent of the commercial 

 forest area. In each division, poorly stocked and 

 deforested lands make up a large segment of the total 

 (fig. 6). 



Forest Resource Report No. 13, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



