Geographie Information Systems Procedures for Conducting Rural Land Market Research

Geographic information systems (GIS) procedures are used to review and to estimate spatial characteristics of a rural land sales database. Geographically referenced rural land sales data are plotted, overlayed on other data, used to compute new data, and used to develop rural land value contours. Clustering of land price data from the contour analyses provides visual evidence of spatial association in the data. Statistical tests suggest the presence of both positive and negative spatial autocorrelation in rural land submarkets. GIS methods are shown here to represent complementary procedures capable of enhancing and extending research expertise in rural land markets. Colorific results may be viewed at http: //atlas.agadm.lsu.edu.