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<DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;font-size:12pt"><DIV><P><SPAN>A polygon feature class delineated on and digitized from 1:24,000 U.S.G.S. quad maps of Minnesota Scientific and Natural Areas (SNAs).</SPAN></P><P><SPAN /></P><P><SPAN>Scientific and natural areas are established to protect and perpetuate in an undisturbed natural state those lands and waters embracing natural features of exceptional scientific and educational value. The SNA Program's goal is to ensure that no single rare feature is lost from any region of the state. This requires protection and management of each feature in sufficient quantity and distribution across the landscape. The Programs' Long Range Plan is to protect at least five locations of plant communities known to occur in each landscape region, and three locations per region of each rare species, plant or animal, and geologic feature. It is estimated that 500 natural areas are needed throughout the state to adequately protect significant features. Because over 40 percent of these rare features occur in prairies, 200 SNAs would be in the prairie area of the state. Of the remainder, approximately 135 are estimated to be needed in the deciduous and 165 in coniferous forest landscape communities in the next 100 years. Protection of multiple sites in each landscape region is a vital means of capturing the genetic diversity and preventing the loss of important species, communities, and features. This strategy observes the wisdom of not putting all our eggs in one basket.</SPAN></P><P><SPAN /></P><P><SPAN>Data download and full metadata: </SPAN><A href="https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/bdry-scientific-and-nat-areas" STYLE="text-decoration:underline;"><SPAN>https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/bdry-scientific-and-nat-areas</SPAN></A></P></DIV></DIV> |