Most of Connecticut’s forests were cleared for agriculture and industry in the 19th century and then allowed to regenerate. From 1960 to 1980, the overall acreage of forest did not change much, even with the rapid spread of roads, housing and commercial development. According to the U.S. Forest Service, the spread of forests on abandoned farms equaled the conversion of forested land to other uses. The late 20th century brought a change, with forest acreage now declining.

This indicator shows the total acreage of forests in Connecticut that occur in patches larger than 50 acres. Property boundaries are not considered; a patch might be owned by one landowner or many. About 88 percent of the forested acres in Connecticut occur in these larger patches (i.e., those greater than 50 acres). By excluding the smaller patches we remove from consideration the many thousands of “forest” patches that are an acre or two in size. While wooded patches as small as one acre are counted by the U.S. Forest Service, these often are the trees in residents’ back yards and cannot be considered fully functioning forests, and therefore are not included here. Data were produced by the Center for Land use Education and Research (CLEAR) at the University of Connecticut as part of the Connecticut’s Changing Landscape Project (http://clear.uconn.edu).

NOTE: The source of forest data was changed. Beginning this year, the Center for Land use Education and Research (CLEAR) at the University of Connecticut provided data based on analysis of satellite imagery. With this report, all previous years’ data has been changed to reflect CLEAR’s historical data in order to make the data comparable across time.Readers’ comments on this change are welcome.