This indicator represents the overall acres of maritime forest currently present in the South Atlantic geography.
Reason for Selection
Overall acreage of existing maritime forest provides an indicator of whether maritime forest being inundated by sea level rise is being replaced or restored somewhere else. Since maritime forest has been substantially reduced from its historic extent, protecting the remaining acreage of existing maritime forest is important. It is also well monitored and resonates with a diversity of audiences.
Input Data
Maritime forest distribution was obtained from each state:
– VA: Berman, M.R. and H. Berquist, 2007. Coastal Maritime Forests in Virginia - Delineation and Distribution. Final report submitted to Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program, Department of Environmental Quality, Richmond, Virginia, pp. 15. http://ccrm.vims.edu/gis_data_maps/data/maritimeforest/index.html. Accessed 1 April 2014.
– NC: Hall, Stephen. 2008. Statewide Assessment of Conservation Priorities at the Landscape Level. North Carolina Natural Heritage Program.
– SC: SC GAP Analysis Program. Accessed 1 April 2014. Since the data layer was from the early 1990s, we removed all maritime forest areas now classified as developed.
– GA: Nongame Conservation Section, Wildlife Resources Division, GA DNR. https://georgiawildlife.com/conservation/coastallandcover
– FL: Florida Natural Areas Inventory. 2012. Florida Cooperative Land Cover Map, Version 2.3. Tallahassee, Florida. http://www.fnai.org/LandCover.cfm. Accessed 1 April 2014.
– 2011 National Land Cover Database (NLCD)
Mapping Steps
Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia data were originally in vector format; South Carolina data was at a 30 m resolution and Florida data was at a 15 m resolution. To combine layers without losing narrow segments of maritime forests, we resampled data to 10 m and then used the Spatial Analyst-Aggregate function to use the maximum value within 1 ha (100 m x 100 m) cells. To update the entire layer to 2011, we removed maritime forest that was classified as “developed” (classes 21-24) in the 2011 NLCD (resampled to 100 m).
For use in the 2020 Blueprint, these data were resampled from 100 meter resolution down to 30 meter resolution because the optimization software we use (Zonation) requires all inputs to have the same raster resolution.
Final indicator values
1 = Maritime forest
Known Issues
– Maritime forests are poorly mapped in South Carolina, while the other states have more recent distribution maps derived with the help of ground-truthing.
– The spatial resolution of the source data has been degraded. While this layer has a 30 m resolution, it was not created directly from the spatially precise input data. Here, we resampled the 200 meter resolution data used in the previous version of the indicator back down to 30 meter resolution so that we could use it in our optimization software.
Disclaimer: Comparing with Older Indicator Versions
There are numerous problems with using South Atlantic indicators for change analysis. Please consult Blueprint staff if you would like to do this (email hilary_morris@fws.gov).
Literature Cited
Berman, M.R. and H. Berquist, 2007. Coastal Maritime Forests in Virginia - Delineation and Distribution. Final report submitted to Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program, Department of Environmental Quality, Richmond, Virginia, pp. 15. http://ccrm.vims.edu/gis_data_maps/data/maritimeforest/index.html. Accessed 1 April 2014.
Florida Natural Areas Inventory. 2012. Florida Cooperative Land Cover Map, Version 2.3. Tallahassee, Florida. http://www.fnai.org/LandCover.cfm. Accessed 1 April 2014.
Georgia Department of Natural Resources. 2013. Nongame Conservation Section Biotics Database. Wildlife Resources Division, Social Circle, GA. https://georgiawildlife.com/conservation/coastallandcover. (April 2014).
Hall, Stephen. 2008. Statewide Assessment of Conservation Priorities at the Landscape Level. North Carolina Natural Heritage Program.
Homer, C.G., Dewitz, J.A., Yang, L., Jin, S., Danielson, P., Xian, G., Coulston, J., Herold, N.D., Wickham, J.D., and Megown, K., 2015, Completion of the 2011 National Land Cover Database for the conterminous United States-Representing a decade of land cover change information. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, v. 81, no. 5, p. 345-354.
South Carolina Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, USGS Biological Resources Division. 2001. South Carolina 27-Class Land Cover, GAP Analysis Program. Clemson, SC. Available: http://www.dnr.sc.gov/GIS/gap/mapping.html (April 2014).
U.S. Geological Survey, Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. 2010. LANDFIRE Biophysical Settings: LANDFIRE 2012 (LF 1.3.0). http://www.landfire.gov.
