Factors Influencing Land Parcelization in Amenity Rich Rural Areas in Wisconsin

Abstract

Parcelization, the division of larger land parcels into smaller parcels, is an ever-growing threat to the conservation and preservation of our natural landscape. Together with the negative ecological effects on the landscape, this phenomenon also contributes to the decline of our rural way of life by reducing the amount of land available for traditional land production economies like forestry and agricultural. Parcelization has wide reaching effects into the economic and social fabric of rural society. It is a growing topic among land industry professionals concerned with the maintenance of traditional land production activities. Parcelization is not only a concern to land industry professionals. Governmental and non-governmental organizations struggle to control parcelization with limited resources. Parcelization is an open window into the process of landscape change and fragmentation. Landscape change typically begins with a parcel split, progresses to ownership and land use fragmentation, and finally culminates in landscape and habitat fragmentation. While an ownership parcel, especially one viewed on a plat book entry, can hide the true intent of the landowner, tax parcels provide an unobstructed view into an area’s potential future. Current research on parcelization illustrates the disparity among researchers, especially in methodological approaches. Study temporal periods vary from sixteen to forty years while the quantity of time periods examined varied from one to five. Average parcel size, parcel density, and other descriptive statistics are popular analysis tools. Few studies examine the effect of landscape features and other spatial attributes that contribute to a parcel split. This study provides much-needed precision into the spatial phenomenon of parcelization while the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allows sophisticated analysis of landscape features and parcel characteristics along with the comparison of historic parcelization to historic land use. Using GIS, historic tax parcel snapshots in eight different years were reconstructed for three towns in Bayfield County, Wisconsin from 1954 to 2007. Historic land use patterns were reconstructed for three snapshot years from 1938 to 2005. Bayfield County experienced increases in new certified survey map (CSM) and platted subdivision parcels during each time period. The county experienced a decrease in larger parcels combined with an increase in medium to small parcels. Five different landscape ecology metrics spatially measured parcelization. These metrics were standardized and combined into a Z-score to formulate a Parcelization Index. The parcelization index evaluated the spatial context of rural sprawl historically and contemporarily in Bayfield County. The Town of Barnes experienced greater parcelization early in the study period, while Bayfield and Delta experienced increased parcelization later in the study period. Comparing a forested region to an agricultural region, the Parcelization Index illustrated that rural sprawl in the forested region lagged behind the agricultural region temporally. Additionally, the majority of CSM parcel splits illustrated the remoteness of the forested region, where the ex-urban agricultural region experienced a majority of platted subdivision parcel splits. The Parcelization Index methodology can evaluate success of land use plans at controlling rural sprawl. This method is flexible in that it utilizes landscape ecology metrics which can be custom tailored to an individual area based on land use/cover, geography, or other resources as needed. Also examined was the temporal change to developed land use, agricultural/open space, and forest cover.

My results indicate that land use change and fragmentation is occurring in Bayfield County. Developed land use increased, while agricultural/open space land use decreased, and forest cover decreased slightly in Bayfield County between 1938 and 2005. Additionally, the results empirically support the hypothesis that parcelization leads to land use fragmentation. Land use change increased in parcelized areas by a factor of 8 to 1 when compared to non-parcelized areas. Finally, a multiple logistic regression (MLR) model analyzed the spatial factors leading to parcelization. A forward stepwise progression MLR model selected the independent variables. The model itself performed rather poorly at predicting future parcel splits in individual time periods. However, the efficiency increased when analyzing the entire study period as a single temporal event. Overlaying the parcel predictor map with the actual parcel splits visually illustrates partial success of the MLR model in predicting areas where parcelization may occur. Based on the results of this study, the spatial factors of parcelization are one dimension of a multi-dimensional phenomenon in Bayfield County. Future studies should incorporate social, economic, land value, regulatory and spatial factors in the examination of parcelization.