Land Ownership: Statewide Inventories
Several inventories provide a picture of public land ownership patterns in Minnesota. They are intended for overview and general planning purposes. Ownership was mapped for each public land survey quarter-quarter section (40-acre unit). The owner is determined by whichever agency owns or administers more than 50 percent of a quarter-quarter section.
The inventories are snapshots in time, compiled from data from many sources of varying quality and currency. There is no comprehensive statewide database of current ownership information and no ongoing maintenance of the inventory data, except at some individual agencies such as the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
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GAP Stewardship: This inventory was conducted to provide ownership and administration information for the Gap Analysis Project, an effort to identify gaps in biodiversity protection. Currency ranges from 1976-2007, although the information is predominantly from 1983-1985. A version with some updates was published in May 2008. A newer version is in progress.
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GIS data (fgdb format): Version published in 2008 is online in Esri file geodatabase format from DNR until the update is available.
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GIS data (fgdb format): Version published in 2008 is online in Esri file geodatabase format from DNR until the update is available.
- State Lands Administered by DNR or by Counties: This inventory identifies state-owned surface interests administered by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources or by a county and is updated weekly. Land parcels that are less than 40 acres are treated as full 40 acre parcels.
- 1983 Minnesota Public Lands: This inventory, coordinated by the Land Management Information Center and DNR, gathered summary land record
information for nearly all federal and state agencies that manage land and for several regional commissions in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
- Written report with descriptive text, maps and summary tables (PDF, 2.3MB, 61 p.). Tables include percentages and acreages of state and federal lands by county, provided as totals and by specific agencies. Note: the report can also be downloaded in Word format for users who need to copy the table numbers into a spreadsheet or database.
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GIS data: This data set incorporates several more data sources than were covered in the above report, thus it contains more categories of ownership.
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State-Owned Land in Minnesota, October 2002:
This overview report from House Research summarizes how much Minnesota land is owned by government units. The report includes a map showing the approximate
percentage of state-owned land within each county.
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Inventory of State-Owned Land:
Since 2002, the Minnesota Department of Administration has been mandated by Minnesota
Statute 16B.245 to conduct a biennial inventory of all state-owned land, including land with improvements, and the number of acres owned by the State. The results from each agency are available in PDF format; the results have not been integrated into a single file, map or coding system.
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