Twenty-five years of increasing inequality among family Forest landowners in the United States

Abstract

Family forest landowners own 39% of forestland in the United States. Here, we report that inequality in the distribution of family forestland, as measured by the Gini Index, has increased since 1993. The increase is not driving primarily by forest fragmentation, as the literature suggests, but instead by an 81% increase in area in tracts of more than 500 acres, especially in the Southern United States.