Reason for SelectionProtected natural areas in urban environments provide urban residents a nearby place to connect with nature and offer refugia for some species. They help foster a conservation ethic by providing opportunities for people to connect with nature, and also support ecosystem services like offsetting heat island effects (Greene and Millward 2017, Simpson 1998), water filtration, stormwater retention, and more (Hoover and Hopton 2019). In addition, parks, greenspace, and greenways can help improve physical and psychological health in communities (Gies 2006). Urban park size complements the equitable access to potential parks indicator by capturing the value of existing parks.Input DataSoutheast Blueprint 2024 extentFWS National Realty Tracts, accessed 12-13-2023Protected Areas Database of the United States(PAD-US):PAD-US 3.0national geodatabase -Combined Proclamation Marine Fee Designation Easement, accessed 12-6-20232020 Census Urban Areas from the Census Bureau’s urban-rural classification; download the data, read more about how urban areas were redefined following the 2020 censusOpenStreetMap data “multipolygons” layer, accessed 12-5-2023A polygon from this dataset is considered a beach if the value in the “natural” tag attribute is “beach”. Data for coastal states (VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX) were downloaded in .pbf format and translated to an ESRI shapefile using R code. OpenStreetMap® is open data, licensed under theOpen Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by theOpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). Additional credit to OSM contributors. Read more onthe OSM copyright page.2021 National Land Cover Database (NLCD): Percentdevelopedimperviousness2023NOAA coastal relief model: volumes 2 (Southeast Atlantic), 3 (Florida and East Gulf of America), 4 (Central Gulf of America), and 5 (Western Gulf of America), accessed 3-27-2024Mapping StepsCreate a seamless vector layer to constrain the extent of the urban park size indicator to inland and nearshore marine areas <10 m in depth. The deep offshore areas of marine parks do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture nearby opportunities for urban residents to connect with nature. Shallow areas are more accessible for recreational activities like snorkeling, which typically has a maximum recommended depth of 12-15 meters. This step mirrors the approach taken in the Caribbean version of this indicator.Merge all coastal relief model rasters (.nc format) together using QGIS “create virtual raster”.Save merged raster to .tif and import into ArcPro.Reclassify the NOAA coastal relief model data to assign areas with an elevation of land to -10 m a value of 1. Assign all other areas (deep marine) a value of 0.Convert the raster produced above to vector using the “RasterToPolygon” tool.Clip to 2024 subregions using “Pairwise Clip” tool.Break apart multipart polygons using “Multipart to single parts” tool.Hand-edit to remove deep marine polygon.Dissolve the resulting data layer.This produces a seamless polygon defining land and shallow marine areas.Clip the Census urban area layer to the bounding box of NoData surrounding the extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Clip PAD-US 3.0 to the bounding box of NoData surrounding the extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Remove the following areas from PAD-US 3.0, which are outside the scope of this indicator to represent parks:All School Trust Lands in Oklahoma and Mississippi (Loc Des = “School Lands” or “School Trust Lands”). These extensive lands are leased out and are not open to the public.All tribal and military lands (“Des_Tp” = "TRIBL" or “Des_Tp” = "MIL"). Generally, these lands are not intended for public recreational use.All BOEM marine lease blocks (“Own_Name” = "BOEM"). These Outer Continental Shelf lease blocks do not represent actively protected marine parks, but serve as the “legal definition for BOEM offshore boundary coordinates...for leasing and administrative purposes” (BOEM).All lands designated as “proclamation” (“Des_Tp” = "PROC"). These typically represent the approved boundary of public lands, within which land protection is authorized to occur, but not all lands within the proclamation boundary are necessarily currently in a conserved status.Retain only selected attribute fields from PAD-US to get rid of irrelevant attributes.Merged the filtered PAD-US layer produced above with the OSM beaches and FWS National Realty Tracts to produce a combined protected areas dataset.The resulting merged data layer contains overlapping polygons. To remove overlapping polygons, use the Dissolve function.Clip the resulting data layer to the inland and nearshore extent.Process all multipart polygons (e.g., separate parcels within a National Wildlife Refuge) to single parts (referred to in Arc software as an “explode”).Select all polygons that intersect the Census urban extent within 0.5 miles. We chose 0.5 miles to represent a reasonable walking distance based on input and feedback from park access experts. Assuming a moderate intensity walking pace of 3 miles per hour, as defined by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s physical activity guidelines, the 0.5 mi distance also corresponds to the 10-minute walk threshold used in the equitable access to potential parks indicator.Dissolve all the park polygons that were selected in the previous step.Process all multipart polygons to single parts (“explode”) again.Add a unique ID to the selected parks. This value will be used in a later step to join the parks to their buffers.Create a 0.5 mi (805 m) buffer ring around each park using the multiring plugin in QGIS. Ensure that “dissolve buffers” is disabled so that a single 0.5 mi buffer is created for each park.Assess the amount of overlap between the buffered park and the Census urban area using “overlap analysis”. This step is necessary to identify parks that do not intersect the urban area, but which lie within an urban matrix (e.g., Umstead Park in Raleigh, NC and Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Preserve in Atlanta, GA). This step creates a table that is joined back to the park polygons using the UniqueID.Remove parks that had ≤10% overlap with the urban areas when buffered. This excludes mostly non-urban parks that do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture parks that provide nearby access for urban residents. Note: The 10% threshold is a judgement call based on testing which known urban parks and urban National Wildlife Refuges are captured at different overlap cutoffs and is intended to be as inclusive as possible.Calculate the GIS acres of each remaining park unit using the Add Geometry Attributes function.Buffer the selected parks by 15 m. Buffering prevents very small and narrow parks from being left out of the indicator when the polygons are converted to raster.Reclassify the parks based on their area into the 7 classes seen in the final indicator values below. These thresholds were informed by park classification guidelines from the National Recreation and Park Association, which classify neighborhood parks as 5-10 acres, community parks as 30-50 acres, and large urban parks as optimally 75+ acres (Mertes and Hall 1995).Assess the impervious surface composition of each park using the NLCD 2021 impervious layer and the Zonal Statistics “MEAN” function. Retain only the mean percent impervious value for each park.Extract only parks with a mean impervious pixel value <80%. This step excludes parks that do not meet the intent of the indicator to capture opportunities to connect with nature and offer refugia for species (e.g., the Superdome in New Orleans, LA, the Astrodome in Houston, TX, and City Plaza in Raleigh, NC).Extract again to the inland and nearshore extent.Export the final vector file to a shapefile and import to ArcGIS Pro.Convert the resulting polygons to raster using the ArcPy Feature to Raster function and the area class field.Assign a value of 0 to all other pixels in the Southeast Blueprint 2024 extent not already identified as an urban park in the mapping steps above. Zero values are intended to help users better understand the extent of this indicator and make it perform better in online tools.Use the land and shallow marine layer and “extract by mask” tool to save the final version of this indicator.Add color and legend to raster attribute table.As a final step, clip to the spatial extent of Southeast Blueprint 2024.Note: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available in theSoutheast Blueprint Data Downloadunder > 6_Code.Final indicator valuesIndicator values are assigned as follows:6= 75+ acre urban park5= 50 to <75 acre urban park4= 30 to <50 acre urban park3= 10 to <30 acre urban park2=5 to <10acreurbanpark1 = <5 acre urban park0 = Not identified as an urban parkKnown IssuesThis indicator does not include park amenities that influence how well the park serves people and should not be the only tool used for parks and recreation planning. Park standards should be determined at a local level to account for various community issues, values, needs, and available resources.This indicator includes some protected areas that are not open to the public and not typically thought of as “parks”, like mitigation lands, private easements, and private golf courses. While we experimented with excluding them using the public access attribute in PAD, due to numerous inaccuracies, this inadvertently removed protected lands that are known to be publicly accessible. As a result, we erred on the side of including the non-publicly accessible lands.The NLCD percent impervious layer contains classification inaccuracies. As a result, this indicator may exclude parks that are mostly natural because they are misclassified as mostly impervious. Conversely, this indicator may include parks that are mostly impervious because they are misclassified as mostly

This dataset contains the common Map Unit attributes for each polygon within the gSSURGO database plus NRCS derived attributes from a data summary table called the National Valu Added Look Up (valu) Table #1. It is comprised of 57 pre-summarized or "ready to map" derived soil survey geographic database attributes including soil organic carbon, available water storage, crop productivity indices, crop root zone depths, available water storage within crop root zone depths, drought vulnerable soil landscapes, and potential wetland soil landscapes. Related metadata values for themes are included. These attribute data are pre-summarized to the map unit level using best practice generalization methods intended to meet the needs of most users. The generalization methods include map unit component weighted averages and percent of the map unit meeting a given criteria. These themes were prepared to better meet the mapping needs of users of soil survey information and can be used with both SSURGO and Gridded SSURGO (gSSURGO) datasets. Gridded SSURGO (gSSURGO) Database is derived from the official Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) Database. SSURGO is generally the most detailed level of soil geographic data developed by the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS) in accordance with NCSS mapping standards. The tabular data represent the soil attributes, and are derived from properties and characteristics stored in the National Soil Information System (NASIS). The gSSURGO data were prepared by merging traditional SSURGO digital vector map and tabular data into State-wide extents, and adding a State-wide gridded map layer derived from the vector, plus a new value added look up (valu) table containing "ready to map" attributes. The gridded map layer is offered in an ArcGIS file geodatabase raster format. The raster and vector map data have a State-wide extent. The raster map data have a 10 meter cell size that approximates the vector polygons in an Albers Equal Area projection. Each cell (and polygon) is linked to a map unit identifier called the map unit key. A unique map unit key is used to link to raster cells and polygons to attribute tables, including the new value added look up (valu) table that contains additional derived data.VALU Table Content:The map unit average Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) values are given in units of g C per square meter for eleven standard layer or zone depths. The average thickness of soil map unit component horizons used in these layer/zone calcuations is also included. The standard layers include: 0-5cm, 5-20cm, 20-50cm, 50-100cm, 100-150cm, and 150-150+cm (maximum reported soil depth). The standard zones include: 0-5cm (also a standard layer), o-20cm, 0-30cm, 0-100cm, and 0-150+cm (full reported soil depth). Zero cm represents the soil surface.The map unit average Available Water Storage (AWS) values are given in units of millimeters for eleven standard layer or zone depths. The average thickness of soil map unit component horizons used in these layer/zone calcuations is also included. The standard layers include: 0-5cm, 5-20cm, 20-50cm, 50-100cm, 100-150cm, and 150-150+cm (maximum reported soil depth). The standard zones include: 0-5cm (also a standard layer), 0-20cm, 0-30cm, 0-100cm, and 0-150+cm (full reported soil depth). Zero cm represents the soil surface.The map unit average National Commodity Crop Productivity Index (NCCPI) values (low index values indicate low productivity and high index values indicate high productivity) are provided for major earthy components. NCCPI values are included for corn/soybeans, small grains, and cotton crops. Of these crops, the highest overall NCCPI value is also identified. Earthy components are those soil series or higher level taxa components that can support crop growth. Major components are those soil components where the majorcompflag = 'Yes' in the SSURGO component table. A map unit percent composition for earthy major components is provided. See Dobos, R. R., H. R. Sinclair, Jr, and M. P. Robotham. 2012. National Commodity Crop Productivity Index (NCCPI) User Guide, Version 2. USDA-NRCS. Available at: ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/NSSC/NCCPI/NCCPI_user_guide.pdfThe map unit average root zone depth values for commodity crops are given in centimeters for major earthy components. Criteria for root-limiting soil depth include: presence of hard bedrock, soft bedrock, a fragipan, a duripan, sulfuric material, a dense layer, a layer having a pH of less than 3.5, or a layer having an electrical conductivity of more than 12 within the component soil profile. If no root-restricting zone is identified, a depth of 150 cm is used to approximate the root zone depth (Dobos et al., 2012). The map unit average available water storage within the root zone depth for major earthy components value is given in millimeters.Drought vulnerable soil landscapes comprise those map units that have available water storage within the root zone for commodity crops that is less than or equal to 6 inches (152 mm) expressed as "1" for a drought vulnerable soil landscape map unit or "0" for a nondroughty soil landscape map unit or NULL for miscellaneous areas (includes water bodies).The potential wetland soil landscapes (PWSL version 1) information is given as the percentage of the map unit (all components) that meet the criteria for a potential wetland soil landscape. See table column (field) description for criteria details. If water was determined to account for 80 or greater percent of a map unit, a value of 999 was used to indicate a water body. This is not a perfect solution, but is helpful to identifying a general water body class for mapping.The map unit sum of the component percentage representative values is also provided as useful metadata. For all valu table columns, NULL values are presented where data are incomplete or not available. How NoData or NULL values and incomplete data were handled during VALU table SOC and AWS calculations:The gSSURGO calculations for SOC and AWS as reported in the VALU table use the following data checking and summarization rules. The guiding principle was to only use the official data in the SSURGO database, and not to make assumptions in case there were some data entry errors. However, there were a few exceptions to this principle if there was a good reason for a Null value in a critical variable, or to accommodate the data coding conventions used in some soil surveys.Horizon depths considerations:If the depth to the top of the surface horizon was missing, but otherwise the horizon depths were all okay, then the depth to the top of the surface horizon (hzdept_r) was set to zero.If the depth to the bottom of the last horizon was missing, and the horizon represented bedrock or had missing bulk density, the depth to the bottom was set to equal to the depth to the top of the same horizon (hzdepb_r = hzdept_r), effectively giving the horizon zero thickness (and thus zero SOC or AWS), but not blocking calculation of other horizons in the profile due to horizon depth errors.Other types of horizon depth errors were considered uncorrectable, and led to all horizon depths for the component being set to a NoData value, effectively eliminating the component from the analysis. The errors included gaps or overlaps in the horizon depths of the soil profile, other cases of missing data for horizon depths, including missing data for the bottom depth of the last horizon if the soil texture information did not indicate bedrock and a bulk density value was coded. The SOC or AWS values were effectively set to zero for components eliminated in this way, so the values at the map unit level could be an underestimate for some soils.Horizon rock fragment considerations:Part of the algorithm for calculating the SOC requires finding the volume of soil that is not rock. This requires three SSURGO variables that indicate rock fragments (fraggt10_r, frag3to10_r, and sieveno10_r). If the soil is not organic, and any of these are missing, then the ratio of the volume of soil fines to the total soil volume was set to “NoData†, and the SOC results were coded as “NoData†and effectively set to zero for the horizon. If the soil is organic, then it may be logical that no measurement of rock fragments was made, and default values for the “zero rock†situation was assumed for these variables (i.e., fraggt10_r = 0, frag3to10_r = 0, sieveno10_r = 100). Organic soils were identified by an “O†in the horizon designator or the texture code represented “Peat†, “Muck†or “Decomposed Plant Material†. If all three of the fragment variables were present, but indicated more than 100% rock, then 100% rock was assumed (zero volume of soil and thus zero for SOC). The rock fragment variables do not influence the AWS calculation because rock content is already accounted for in the available water capacity (awc_r) variable at the horizon level.Horizon to component summary:To summarize data from the horizon level to the component level, the evaluation proceeded downward from the surface. If a valid value for AWS could not be calculated for any horizon, then the result for that horizon and all deeper horizons was set to NoData. The same rule was separately applied to the SOC calculation, so it was possible to have results for SOC but not AWS, or vice versa.Component to mapunit summary:To summarize data from the component level to the map unit level, the component percentages must be valid. There are tests both of the individual component percentage (comppct_r) data, and also of the sum of the component percentages at the map unit level (mu_sum_comppct_r). For the gSSURGO VALU table, the following rules were applied for the individual components: 1) The comppct_r must be in the range from 0 to 100, inclusive. 2) Individual components with a comppct_r that was Null (nothing coded) were ignored. A zero comppct_r value excludes

Jurisdictional Unit, 2022-05-21. For use with WFDSS, IFTDSS, IRWIN, and InFORM.

Last updated on 06/17/2022

Overview

The national fire history perimeter data layer of conglomerated Agency Authoratative perimeters was developed in support of the WFDSS application and wildfire decision support for the 2021 fire season. The layer encompasses the final fire perimeter datasets of the USDA Forest Service, US Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service, the Alaska Interagency Fire Center, CalFire, and WFIGS History. Perimeters are included thru the 2021 fire season. Requirements for fire perimeter inclusion, such as minimum acreage requirements, are set by the contributing agencies.

WFIGS, NPS and CALFIRE data now include Prescribed Burns.

Several data sources were used in the development of this layer:

• Alaska fire history
• USDA FS Regional Fire History Data
• BLM Fire Planning and Fuels
• National Park Service - Includes Prescribed Burns
• Fish and Wildlife Service
• Bureau of Indian Affairs
• CalFire FRAS - Includes Prescribed Burns
• WFIGS - BLM & BIA and other S&L

Fire perimeter data are often collected at the local level, and fire management agencies have differing guidelines for submitting fire perimeter data. Often data are collected by agencies only once annually. If you do not see your fire perimeters in this layer, they were not present in the sources used to create the layer at the time the data were submitted. A companion service for perimeters entered into the WFDSS application is also available, if a perimeter is found in the WFDSS service that is missing in this Agency Authoratative service or a perimeter is missing in both services, please contact the appropriate agency Fire GIS Contact listed in the table below.

Reason for Selection Protected natural areas in urban environments provide urban residents a nearby place to connect with nature and offer refugia for some species. Because beaches in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are open to the public, beaches also provide important outdoor recreation opportunities for urban residents, so we include beaches as parks in this indicator. Input Data

Southeast Blueprint 2023 subregions: Caribbean
Southeast Blueprint 2023 extent
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Coastal Relief Model, accessed 11-22-2022
Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 3.0: VI, PR, and Marine Combined Fee Easement
Puerto Rico Protected Natural Areas 2018 (December 2018 update): Terrestrial and marine protected areas (PACAT2018_areas_protegidasPR_TERRESTRES_07052019.shp, PACAT2018_areas_protegidasPR_MARINAS_07052019.shp) 
2020 Census Urban Areas from the Census Bureau’s urban-rural classification; download the data, read more about how urban areas were redefined following the 2020 census
OpenStreetMap data “multipolygons” layer, accessed 3-14-2023

A polygon from this dataset is considered a park if the “leisure” tag attribute is either “park” or “nature_reserve”, and considered a beach if the value in the “natural” tag attribute is “beach”. OpenStreetMap describes leisure areas as “places people go in their spare time” and natural areas as “a wide variety of physical geography, geological and landcover features”. Data were downloaded in .pbf format and translated ton an ESRI shapefile using R code. OpenStreetMap® is open data, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF). Additional credit to OSM contributors. Read more on the OSM copyright page.

TNC Lands - Public Layer, accessed 3-8-2023
U.S. Virgin Islands beaches layer (separate vector layers for St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John) provided by Joe Dwyer with Lynker/the NOAA Caribbean Climate Adaptation Program on 3-3-2023 (contact jdwyer@lynker.com for more information)

Mapping Steps

Most mapping steps were completed using QGIS (v 3.22) Graphical Modeler.
Fix geometry errors in the PAD-US PR data using Fix Geometry. This must be done before any analysis is possible.
Merge the terrestrial PR and VI PAD-US layers.
Use the NOAA coastal relief model to restrict marine parks (marine polygons from PAD-US and Puerto Rico Protected Natural Areas) to areas shallower than 10 m in depth. The deep offshore areas of marine parks do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture nearby opportunities for urban residents to connect with nature.
Merge into one layer the resulting shallow marine parks from marine PAD-US and the Puerto Rico Protected Natural Areas along with the combined terrestrial PAD-US parks, OpenStreetMap, TNC Lands, and USVI beaches. Omit from the Puerto Rico Protected Areas layer the “Zona de Conservación del Carso”, which has some policy protections and conservation incentives but is not formally protected.
Fix geometry errors in the resulting merged layer using Fix Geometry.
Intersect the resulting fixed file with the Caribbean Blueprint subregion.
Process all multipart polygons to single parts (referred to in Arc software as an “explode”). This helps the indicator capture, as much as possible, the discrete units of a protected area that serve urban residents.
Clip the Census urban area to the Caribbean Blueprint subregion.
Select all polygons that intersect the Census urban extent within 1.2 miles (1,931 m). The 1.2 mi threshold is consistent with the average walking trip on a summer day (U.S. DOT 2002) used to define the walking distance threshold used in the greenways and trails indicator. Note: this is further than the 0.5 mi distance used in the continental version of the indicator. We extended it to capture East Bay and Point Udall based on feedback from the local conservation community about the importance of the park for outdoor recreation.
Dissolve all the park polygons that were selected in the previous step.
Process all multipart polygons to single parts (“explode”) again.
Add a unique ID to the selected parks. This value will be used to join the parks to their buffers.
Create a 1.2 mi (1,931 m) buffer ring around each park using the multiring buffer plugin in QGIS. Ensure that “dissolve buffers” is disabled so that a single 1.2 mi buffer is created for each park.
Assess the amount of overlap between the buffered park and the Census urban area using overlap analysis. This step is necessary to identify parks that do not intersect the urban area, but which lie within an urban matrix. This step creates a table that is joined back to the park polygons using the UniqueID.
Remove parks that had ≤2% overlap with the urban areas when buffered. This excludes mostly non-urban parks that do not meet the intent of this indicator to capture parks that provide nearby access for urban residents. Note: In the continental version of this indicator, we used a threshold of 10%. In the Caribbean version, we lowered this to 2% in order to capture small parks that dropped out of the indicator when we extended the buffer distance to 1.2 miles.
Calculate the GIS acres of each remaining park unit using the Add Geometry Attributes function.
Join the buffer attribute table to the previously selected parks, retaining only the parks that exceeded the 2% urban area overlap threshold while buffered. 
Buffer the selected parks by 15 m. Buffering prevents very small parks and narrow beaches from being left out of the indicator when the polygons are converted to raster.
Reclassify the polygons into 7 classes, seen in the final indicator values below. These thresholds were informed by park classification guidelines from the National Recreation and Park Association, which classify neighborhood parks as 5-10 acres, community parks as 30-50 acres, and large urban parks as optimally 75+ acres (Mertes and Hall 1995).
Export the final vector file to a shapefile and import to ArcGIS Pro.
Convert the resulting polygons to raster using the ArcPy Polygon to Raster function. Assign values to the pixels in the resulting raster based on the polygon class sizes of the contiguous park areas.
Clip to the Caribbean Blueprint 2023 subregion.
As a final step, clip to the spatial extent of Southeast Blueprint 2023. 

Note: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available in the Southeast Blueprint Data Download under > 6_Code. Final indicator values Indicator values are assigned as follows: 6 = 75+ acre urban park 5 = >50 to <75 acre urban park 4 = 30 to <50 acre urban park 3 = 10 to <30 acre urban park 2 = 5 to <10 acre urban park 1 = <5 acre urban park 0 = Not identified as an urban park Known Issues

This indicator does not include park amenities that influence how well the park serves people and should not be the only tool used for parks and recreation planning. Park standards should be determined at a local level to account for various community issues, values, needs, and available resources. 
This indicator includes some protected areas that are not open to the public and not typically thought of as “parks”, like mitigation lands, private easements, and private golf courses. While we experimented with excluding them using the public access attribute in PAD, due to numerous inaccuracies, this inadvertently removed protected lands that are known to be publicly accessible. As a result, we erred on the side of including the non-publicly accessible lands.
This indicator includes parks and beaches from OpenStreetMap, which is a crowdsourced dataset. While members of the OpenStreetMap community often verify map features to check for accuracy and completeness, there is the potential for spatial errors (e.g., misrepresenting the boundary of a park) or incorrect tags (e.g., labelling an area as a park that is not actually a park). However, using a crowdsourced dataset gives on-the-ground experts, Blueprint users, and community members the power to fix errors and add new parks to improve the accuracy and coverage of this indicator in the future.

Other Things to Keep in Mind

This indicator calculates the area of each park using the park polygons from the source data. However, simply converting those park polygons to raster results in some small parks and narrow beaches being left out of the indicator. To capture those areas, we buffered parks and beaches by 15 m and applied the original area calculation to the larger buffered polygon, so as not to inflate the area by including the buffer. As a result, when the buffered polygons are rasterized, the final indicator has some areas of adjacent pixels that receive different scores. While these pixels may appear to be part of one contiguous park or suite of parks, they are scored differently because the park polygons themselves are not actually contiguous. 
The Caribbean version of this indicator uses a slightly different methodology than the continental Southeast version. It includes parks within a 1.2 mi distance from the Census urban area, compared to 0.5 mi in the continental Southeast. We extended it to capture East Bay and Point Udall based on feedback from the local conservation community about the importance of the park for outdoor recreation. Similarly, this indicator uses a 2% threshold of overlap between buffered parks and the Census urban areas, compared to a 10% threshold in the continental Southeast. This helped capture small parks that dropped out of the indicator when we extended the buffer distance to 1.2 miles. Finally, the Caribbean version does not use the impervious surface cutoff applied in the continental Southeast

Hydric soils indicate a current or former wetland condition, and for this layer, hydric inclusions (>15% hydric soils) were not added to the layer, while hydric complexes (<15% hydric soils) were included. This is a statewide layer that can be used as one resource in identifying current or former wetland areas. United States Department of Agriculture-National Resource Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS) Soil Survey Geographic database (SSURGO) Soils were used as the base dataset and hydric soil types were queried out on a county by county basis in a GIS environment. USDA-NRCS State Soil Scientists provided the hydric soil types in Excel table format by county, and Wetlands, Lakes, and Streams unit (WLSU) produced this layer from that official list.

Field Name

Descriptions

CoverType

This is the approximate historical landcover type. This data was pulled from the land 1800 Michigan Natural Features Inventory dataset. Its typcially used as part of the Landscape Level Wetland Functional Assesement.

MapUnitSymbol

Map unit symbol is an attribute that tracks the type of soil. This code can be used to look up information for a partical soil.

Acres

Size of the hydric soil polygon.

AreaSymbol

County code for location of the polygon.

AreaName

Name of the county in which the soil is found.

MapUnitCode

A symbol used to uniquely identify the soil map unit in the soil survey

MapUnitName

Correlated name of the mapunit (recommended name or field name for surveys in progress).

Component

Name assigned to a component based on its range of properties. Local Phase - Phase criterion to be used at a local level, in conjunction with "component name" to help identify a soil component.

Representation

The percentage of the component of the mapunit.

Landforms

A word or group of words used to name a feature on the earth's surface, expressed in the plural form.

HydricRating

A yes/no field that indicates whether or not a map unit component is classified as a "hydric soil". If rated as hydric, the specific criteria met are listed in the Component Hydric Criteria table. Because this data is a hydric layer all will be yes

HydricCriteria

Criterion code for the soil characteristic(s) and/or feature(s) that cause the map unit component to be classified as a "hydric soil." These codes are the paragraph numbers in the hydric soil criteria publication.

NWIWater

The approximated National Wetland Inventory water regime code assigned to this soil type. This was done as part of the Landscape Level Functional Assessment.

NWICode

Code generated from the landcover type and NWI water field. The approximated National Wetland Inventory Code approximated for this historic landcover.

HGMCode

Code for the Landscape Level Assessment. Combines each of the coded types. For example TEBAVR = Terrene Basin Vertical Flow

Landform

The type of geological feature in which the wetland resides. Slope (SL) Wetlands occurring on a slope of 5% or greater. Island (IS) A wetland completely surrounded by water. Fringe (FR) Wetland occurs in the shallow water zone of a permanent waterbody. *NWI water regime F, G, and H Floodplain (FP) Wetland occurs on an active alluvial plain along a river and some streams. *Modifiers FPba (Basin) and FPfl ( Flat) Basin (BA) Wetland occurs in a distinct depression. *NWI water regime C and E Flat (FL) Wetland occurs on a nearly level landform. *NWI water regime A and B

Landscape_Position

Landscape position values are determined by cross referencing NWI with hydrology and topography. NWI polygons that spatially intersect a stream/river in the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) are classified as lotic. Lotic type wetlands can be further refined to indicate their adjacency to a stream or a river (lotic stream or lotic river). High resolution NHD data was used to differentiate rivers from streams in this analysis. A NHD classification completed by MDNR, Institute for Fisheries Research separated rivers by temperature gradient (cold, cool, warm) and size, based on average water flows (cubic feet per second or CFS). This dataset was used in the LLWFA analysis to mark this distinction. NWI Polygons that are determined to be within the basin of a lake are classified as lentic. Identifying the extent of a lake basin, and thus which wetlands fall within it, is done with the assistance of digital elevation models (DEM). NWI Polygons that don’t intersect surface water features or aren’t spatially located within a lake basin are classified as terrene

Waterbody_Type

Waterbody type classification is the simplest of the 4 LLWW descriptors. Ponds, lakes, and rivers are classified as such based explicitly on NWI Cowardin code. Lakes and ponds were separated at the 5-acre mark, all open-water polygons less than or equal to 5 acres were classified as ponds, while all open-water polygons larger than 5 acres were classified as lakes. The 5 acre cutoff was chosen to remain consistent with previously existing EGLE regulations. High resolution NHD data was used to differentiate rivers from streams in this analysis. A NHD classification completed by MDNR, Institute for Fisheries Research separated rivers by temperature gradient (cold, cool, warm) and size, based on average water flows (CFS) This dataset was used in the LLWFA analysis to mark this distinction.

Waterflow_Path

Water flow path, otherwise known as hydrodynamics, is classified by automated and manual interpretation of the intersection of NHD surface water features and NWI. Automated methods include intersecting NHD and NWI to capture throughflow wetlands (in-stream wetlands), both natural and artificial. A distinction is drawn in NHD between natural stream/river features and artificial canal/ditch features. Vegetated NWI wetlands that don’t intersect any surface water body are classified as isolated. Detailed coding was developed in an effort to differentiate intermittent, artificial, and perennial connections between wetlands and other surface waterbodies. Any wetland classified as lentic (Landscape Position) is automatically assigned a water flow path of bidirectional, accounting for the tidal effects of lakes on adjacent wetlands

Landform1

A secondary code used to determine type of floodplain and if a vegetated wetland is associated with a pond. Associated w/Pond (pd) Basin (ba) Flat (fl)

Landscape1

Field used to display if a wetland falls within a Headwater area Headwater (hw)

LLWFAComments

Field used to make notes during the LLWFA coding process.

HMValues

All function Values combined to perform the count.

FunCount

Number of Functions each wetland could be performing.

VegOrNotVeg

Is the wetland vegetated or open water (non veg).

FloodWaterStorage

Function field for Flood Water Storage H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

StreamflowMaintenance

Function field for Streamflow Maintenance H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

NutrientTransformation

Function field for Nutrient TransformationH (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

SedimentRetention

Function field for Sediment Retention H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

ShorelineStabailization

Function field for Shoreline Stabilization H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

FishHabitat

Function field for Fish Habitat. H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

StreamShading

Function field for Stream Shading H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

WaterfowlWaterbirdHabitat

Function field for Waterfowl and Water Bird Habitat. H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

ShorebirdHabitat

Function field for Shorebird Habitat. H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

InteriorForestBirdHabitat

Function field for Interior Forest Bird Habitat. H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

AmphibianHabitat

Function field for Amphibian Habitat. H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

GroundWaterInfluence

Function field for Ground Water InfluenceH (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

CarbonSequestration

Function field for Carbon Sequestration H (2) = High M (1) = Moderate

PathogenRetention

Function field for Pathogen Retention 1 = Wetlands that intersect 303d listed streams, 2 = Wetlands within a 500 ft buffer of 303d streams, 3 Streams that intersect wetlands that filter Pathogens, 4 wetlands within a 500 ft buffer that filter pathogens. For historical wetlands this would be showing best areas to do potential restoration.

The hydric soils polygons are not updated, however attributes will be updated when Landcape Level Wetland Functional data is completed.For questions about this content reach out to Jeremy Jones at jonesj28@michigan.gov.