Evaluation of Land Trusts in Wisconsin

Abstract

This paper examines how lands conserved by land trusts are spatiotemporally arranged in the state of Wisconsin. To analyze this question, these lands were mapped out in ArcGIS Pro and bar graphs were creating depicting the acreage of lands in three categories. The first is lands that started being conserved through the end of the year 2000, the second is lands whose conservation start date is between January 1, 2001 through September 30, 2019, and the third of which is those with unknown start dates. A Multi-Distance Spatial Cluster Analysis (Ripley’s K Function) was used to determine any clustering of landscapes across the state. The results fit the null hypothesis and did not show any significant increase in acreage of land that started being conserved from 2001-2019 compared to that which began being conserved in 2000 or earlier, and also did not show any significant clustering of land trust parcels in Wisconsin. More research needs to be done in order to determine if these results were only obtained due to the lack of data or if it is true that there is no significant difference in acreage conserved between the two categories of start dates and that there is no significant clustering of Wisconsin’s land trust sites.