Protected Freshwater Forested Wetlands

These data show the protected areas indicator freshwater forested wetlands conservation assets that are part in the Landscape Conservation Project for Florida.

Protected conservation assets are an ecological indicator of the Florida Landscape Conservation Project (LCP). The LCP entails a large-scale assessment of and planning for the health of important natural resources, known as Conservation Assets (CAs), in Florida. Conservation planning at the landscape scale provides a framework for safeguarding functional ecosystems, and their interconnected processes required for maintaining healthy resources. Spatially explicit data from the project informs coordination and prioritization for making conservation decisions. Additionally, a suite of ecological indicators was carefully selected for each CA to represent important characteristics of each Asset and offers metrics that serve to evaluate current status, monitor trends over time, and guide conservation activities with clear measures of management effectiveness. Results are shared routinely on the Florida Conservation Planning Atlas website (www.floridacpa.com) and periodically in a summary report card that will be available for managers and the wider public.

Protection of conservation assets provides a measure of safety for the future of ecological systems in Florida. Protected areas are generally safe from development and managed for the benefits of the important species reliant upon them. Likewise, habitat managers may apply adaptation strategies to manage against threats such as Sea Level Rise.

Conservation assets for Florida for these analyses were extracted from the Cooperative Land Cover (CLC 3.3) from December 2019. Levels of protection were evaluated using the Florida Managed Lands Layer (FLMA), beginning with August 2019.

The conservation assets of Florida represent the important natural resources in Florida. Conservation assets with protection as an indicator include Coastal Uplands, Hardwood Forested Uplands, High Pine and Scrub, Pine Flatwoods and Dry Prairie, Freshwater Forested Wetlands, and Freshwater Non-Forested Wetlands.