Name: FL Forever Conservation Needs Assessment Group Layer
Display Field:
Type: Group Layer
Geometry Type: null
Description: The Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment is an analysis of the geographic distribution of certain types of natural resources, or resource-based land uses (such as recreation or sustainable forestry), that have been identified by the Legislature as needing increased conservation attention. The Inventory developed or compiled statewide data for 15 resource types that have been identified by the Florida Forever Advisory Council as the focus of Florida Forever’s conservation actions. The geographic data for these resource types is compared with existing public conservation lands and proposed environmental land acquisition projects to evaluate the protection status of these resources andto guide decisions about future conservation efforts.
The Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment was prepared specifically to inform the Florida Forever Advisory Council and addresses 15 of 34 performance measures identified by the Council. The Assessment considers only measures that guide environmental land acquisition decisions; it does not consider measures that are related to management performance or restoration. The Assessment is an objective, science-based analysis using the best statewide data currently available. It is the result of a collaborative effort involving many of Florida’s natural resource experts, and represents the general consensus of these experts, although final responsibility for interpretation of the data resides with the Inventory. Data for the Needs Assessment are maintained and updated by Florida Natural Areas Inventory under contract to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and in collaboration with many partners. The data represent a statewide view of resource distributions and are intended to inform state conservation priorities and measure progress of the Florida Forever program in protecting these resources.
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI); Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC); University of Florida, FDEP/Office of Greenways and Trails; Florida Natural Areas Inventory in collaboration with water resource experts; Advanced Geospatial, Inc.
Description: This data set was developed to identify habitat protection needs for rare species in Florida. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission originally identified strategic habitat conservation areas (SHCA) in the Commission report, "Closing the Gaps in Florida's Wildlife Habitat Conservation System" (Cox et al. 1994). The goal of the SHCA is to identify the minimum amount of land needed in Florida to ensure long-term survival of key components to Florida's biological diversity. In 2009, the SHCA underwent a significant revision based on a new suite of species, updated datasets, new datasets that did not exist when the original analysis was conducted, and improved analytical techniques including spatially explicit population viability analyses (Endries et al 2009). In 2020, FNAI worked with FWC to update the SHCAs based on more recent habitat models developed by FWC since 2009, including the addition of potential habitat within existing conservation lands for all 62 focal species. The 2020 SHCAs include habitat data for 62 terrestrial vertebrate species and are prioritized into five priority classes based on rarity (FNAI State and Global ranks). For more information see the Conservation Needs Assessment Technical Report: https://www.fnai.org/conslands/florida-forever
Value 1 = Priority 1 (Highest): State Rank 1 and Global Rank 1-3 Value 2 = Priority 2: State Rank 1 and Global Rank 4-5 or State Rank 2 and Global Rank 2-3 Value 3 = Priority 3: State Rank 2 and Global Rank 4-5 or State Rank 3 and Global Rank 3 Value 4 = Priority 4: State Rank 3 and Global Rank 4 Value 5 = Priority 5: State Rank 3 and Global Rank 5 or State Rank 4 and Global Rank 4
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)
Name: Rare Species Habitat Conservation Priorities
Display Field: RASTER_CATEGORY
Type: Feature Layer
Geometry Type: esriGeometryPolygon
Description: This data set was developed as part of the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment. The FNAI Habitat Conservation Priorities data layer prioritizes places on the landscape that would protect both the greatest number of rare species and those species with the greatest conservation need. We developed the data layer by first selecting species with the greatest conservation need in Florida and developing habitat maps around known occurrences of those species. The Inventory currently has more than 28,000 occurrence records for Florida's rare and endangered species in the form of point locations. For this data layer we wanted to identify habitat areas, based on these point locations, that represent the geographic extent of the species occurrence on the landscape. We created habitat polygons only around known occurrences, rather than creating polygons of potential habitat where no occurrence records exist. In using this method, we are able to definitively say that acquisition of a habitat area serves to protect a particular species because we have documentation of the species at that site. The habitats were then ranked based on quality/suitability for the species. The final dataset is a weighted species richness overlay of individual species habitat models for 634 species, including 283 invertebrates, 244 plants, and 106 vertebrates. Species are weighted according to Heritage Global Rarity Rank, Percent Protected on Conservation Lands, Taxonomic Distinctiveness, and Endemism. For detailed methods see the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment Technical Report, available online at https://www.fnai.org/conslands/florida-forever.
Value 1 = Priority 1 (Highest) Value 2 = Priority 2 Value 3 = Priority 3 Value 4 = Priority 4 Value 5 = Priority 5 Value 6 = Priority 6
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI)
Description: This layer was created as part of the Florida Ecological Greenways Network GIS Database. The Florida Ecological Greenways Network (FEGN) identifies the opportunities to protect large, intact landscapes important for conserving Florida’s biodiversity and ecosystem services, and serves as a backbone for biodiversity and ecosystem protection efforts in Florida. An important goal of the FEGN is to protect a functionally connected network of public and private conservation lands from the tip of south Florida to the tip of the Florida panhandle while also potentially providing functional connectivity to conservation lands in Georgia and Alabama. Prioritization of the new FEGN base boundary is required to refine priority focal areas and facilitate implementation efforts by the Office of Greenways and Trails and partners and related conservation evaluation processes including the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment. Landscape Linkages is represented by the Florida Ecological Greenways Network as revised in 2021, a statewide system of landscape hubs, linkages, and conservation corridors. Prioritization is based on factors such as importance for wide-ranging species, importance for maintaining a connected reserve network, and riparian corridors. Priority 1 areas are considered most important for completing a statewide ecological network of public and private conservation lands.
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: University of Florida, Center for Landscape Conservation Planning; FDEP/Office of Greenways and Trails
Description: This data set was developed as part of the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment. Florida Forever Measure B4: The number of acres acquired of under-represented native ecosystems. Depending on the classification system followed, Florida features as many as 81 different natural community types (FNAI 2010). Many of these community types, particularly wetland communities, are relatively well-represented on existing conservation lands, and therefore are less of a priority for land acquisition than some of Florida's rarest communities that are currently not well-protected. The 1997 Florida Preservation 2000 Program Remaining Needs and Priorities Report (Brock 1997) identified natural community types that were inadequately represented on conservation lands in Florida. Since that time, the Office of Environmental Services (OES), Florida Department of Environmental Protection, has regularly reported progress toward protecting additional acres of natural communities through land acquisition. Based on the OES criteria, a natural community is considered to be inadequately represented on conservation lands if less than 15% of the original extent of that community is currently found on existing conservation lands. For a complete description please refer to: Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment Technical Report. Florida Natural Areas Inventory. Tallahassee, FL. (available online at www.fnai.org)
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI)
Description: This data set was developed as part of the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment. Floodplains are often described in terms of statistical frequency of flooding, i.e. 10-year floodplain or 100-year floodplain. The boundary of the 100-year flood is commonly used in floodplain mitigation programs to identify areas where the risk of flooding is significant, e.g. FEMA data. We worked closely with members of the Florida Forever Technical Advisory Group who recommended that the natural floodplain should be represented by natural or semi-natural areas within the 100-year floodplain as identified by FEMA.For a complete description please refer to: the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment Technical Report. Florida Natural Areas Inventory. Tallahassee, Florida (available online at www.fnai.org).
Florida Forever Measure C4: The number of acres acquired that protect natural floodplain functions. Value 1 = Priority 1 (Highest) Value 2 = Priority 2 Value 3 = Priority 3 Value 4 = Priority 4 Value 5 = Priority 5 Value 6 = Priority 6
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI)
Description: This data set was developed as part of the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment. Measure C5: The number of acres acquired that protect surface waters of the state. In consultation with water resource experts from the water management districts, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Division of Water Resource Management, DEP Office of Coastal and Aquatic Managed Areas (CAMA), and Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission we determined that this measure concerns the protection of surface waters that currently remain in good condition, as opposed to those in need of restoration. Restoration efforts are covered under other Florida Forever goals and measures. The types of surface water resources that are included as significant surface waters are shellfish harvesting areas, seagrass beds, Outstanding Florida Waters (OFWs), National Wild and Scenic Rivers, springs, estuaries included in the National Estuary Program, water bodies important for imperiled fish (Hoehn 1998). For a complete description please refer to: Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment Technical Report. Florida Natural Areas Inventory. Tallahassee, Florida (available online at www.fnai.org).
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI)
Description: This data set was developed as part of the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment. Degree of disturbance was assumed to be an indicator of functionality. We created a functional wetlands data layer by first selecting all wetland land cover classes within the Cooperative Land Cover v3.3. Wetlands were assigned priorities based on natural quality using a Land Use Intensity index (LUI) developed by Tom Hoctor at the University of Florida (September 2013, updated by FNAI 2018) and the FNAI Potential Natural Areas (PNA; April 2011). For a complete description please refer to: Conservation Needs Assessment Technical Report. Florida Natural Areas Inventory, Tallahassee, FL (available online at https://www.fnai.org/conslands/florida-forever).
Florida Forever Measure C8: The number of acres of functional wetland systems protected. Value 1 = Priority 1 (Highest)
Value 2 = Priority 2 Value 3 = Priority 3 Value 4 = Priority 4 Value 5 = Priority 5 Value 6 = Priority 6
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI)
Description: This data set was developed as part of the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment. Measure D3: The number of acres acquired of groundwater recharge areas critical to springs, sinks, aquifers, other natural systems, or water supply. One of the legislatively stated goals of the Florida Forever program is to acquire acres of groundwater recharge critical to springs, sinks, aquifers, other natural systems or water supply. In order to develop a means of identifying these areas, Florida Natural Areas Inventory subcontracted with Advanced Geospatial, Inc. (AGI) to develop a statewide Recharge Potential model. Input data layers for the model were consistent with those used in the Florida Aquifer Vulnerability Assessment (FAVA) developed by the Florida Geological Survey and consisted of soil hydraulic conductivity, proximity to karst features, depth to water, and overburden. These input layers were combined using a spatial analysis called Fuzzy Logic. Detailed documentation for the base model may be found in AGI's final report, "FNAI- Recharge Component, 2009". The AGI model is a statewide grid of 300 x 300m cells, with cell values ranging from 0 - 1 on a continuous scale. The continuous values allow for flexibility in how the model is applied. For Florida Forever reporting and evaluation it was necessary to group the values into several priority classes, ranging from high to low, to help focus on the most important places statewide to protect significant recharge areas. The prioritization also addresses the intent of Florida Forever to acquire recharge areas important for springs and water supply. FNAI consulted with AGI, Florida Geological Survey and DEP to accomplish this prioritization. For more details please refer to the Florida Forever Conservation Needs Assessment Technical Report, available online at http://www.fnai.org/FlForever.cfm. The final Prioritized Recharge dataset is a 15m grid with 6 priority classes.
Value 1 = Priority 1 (Highest) Value 2 = Priority 2 Value 3 = Priority 3 Value 4 = Priority 4 Value 5 = Priority 5 Value 6 = Priority 6
Service Item Id: 8b387f61c72845628b66ef68e873523f
Copyright Text: Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI); Advanced Geospatial Inc.