Ecologically Important Areas - 2020

Ecologically Important Areas - 2020 is an analysis of regionally significant Terrestrial and Wetland Ecological Areas in and surrounding the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. <br/><br/>This product was created to support the Met Council's comprehensive planning process for Imagine 2050. The data is meant to help communities identify potentially important ecological areas within their community and assist them in making important land use development decisions that help balance the need to protect and/or improve important ecosystem resources for long-term ecological health while allocating suitable land to accommodate future population and economic growth.<br/><br/>The data is based on previous versions of the Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources Regionally Significnat Ecological Areas (RSEA) datasets: 2008 and 2014 and taking into account more recent development as defined by the Metropolitan Council's 2020 Generalized Land Use data. <br/><br/>The RSEA datasets are the compilation and analysis of individual forest, grassland, and wetland ecological models designed to identify important Terrestrial and Wetland Ecological Areas in and surrounding the seven-county Twin Cities metropolitan areas (see Regionally Significant Ecological Areas and Regional Ecological Corridors - MLCCS derived 2014 on the MN DNR website to learn more). The ecological models are run on the Minnesota Land Cover Classification System (MLCCS) data. Although the 2014 version of RSEA is the most recent endorsed dataset by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the Metropolitan Council felt that portion of the 2008 version highlighted land cover areas that may still have potential ecologcial importance to the region and therefore included areas that are not included in the 2014 version (See Lineage for more details).<br/><br/>Identified Ecologically Important Areas of 2008 and 2014 were contracted in 2025 based on observed development as of year 2020 as defined by the Metropolitan Council's 2020 Generalized Land Use data. As a result, some areas remain that might be ecologically important that are represented by long, narrow strips of land that did not coorespond with developed areas.<br/><br/>