Southeast Blueprint Subregions [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] {2024} Full Details
This dataset was automatically cataloged from the provider's ArcGIS Hub. In some cases, information shown here may be incorrect or out-of-date. Click the 'Visit Source' button to search for items on the original provider's website.
Attribute | Value |
---|---|
Click on map to inspect values |
Full Details
- Title:
- Southeast Blueprint Subregions [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] {2024}
- Description:
- CONTINENTAL SUBREGIONS The continental portion of the Southeast Blueprint is composed of 15 Southeast states and the surrounding marine environment to the end of U.S. waters in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. We further subdivide the continental area into subregions as described below. Input Data U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Level IV Ecoregions shapefile with state boundaries (EPA L4), accessed 12-8-2021 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)Watershed Boundary Dataset (WBD), accessed 12-8-2021: HUC4s;download the data 2021 Census TIGER/Lines State boundary, accessed 12-8-2021 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)U.S. Maritime Limits and Boundaries,accessed 9-20-2023 Marine Ecoregions Level IIIfrom the Commission for Environmental Cooperation North American Environmental Atlas, accessed 12-8-2021 Southeast Blueprint 2023 extent Southeast Blueprint 2023 subregions Mapping StepsNote: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available in theSoutheast Blueprint Data Downloadunder > 6_Code. Generally, we used the following mapping steps.Inland Continental Do some initial grouping of the EPA ecoregions to make larger ecoregions. Usually, we grouped by Level III ecoregions; sometimes we went down to the Level IV ecoregions to make smoother, larger ecoregions. The EPA ecoregions include some "islands" where part of an ecoregion is not contiguous with the rest. Because we need contiguous subregions to use in running Zonation, identify those "islands" and assign them to the contiguous ecoregion that surrounds them. In addition, some ecoregions have long, finger-like, "peninsulas" that protrude from the ecoregion. Sometimes we assigned these to the surrounding ecoregion to make smoother edges. Union together the modified EPA ecoregions and HUC4 watershed layers and reclassify to assign subregions to unique combinations of EPA ecoregions and HUC4 watersheds. For the "islands" and "peninsulas" mentioned above, we made exceptions to the above rules and assigned those polygons to the subregion that surrounds them. Use the Census TIGER/Lines state boundaries to remove HUC4 areas that extend beyond the Southeast Blueprint extent (i.e., states not part of SECAS). This removes some coastal water areas in the Northeast United States that are outside the Southeast Blueprint area. Marine Continental From the NOAA maritime limits and boundaries layer, select the lines from the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that define the outer limit of the U.S. offshore marine waters in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Intersect the EEZ lines with the inland continental subregions to create a large marine polygon bounded by the coastal edge of the inland subregion and the EEZ. In the vast majority of the coastline, the coastal boundaries of the inland subregions are defined by HUC4s. In a tiny area of south Texas, the coastal boundary is instead defined by EPA Level III Ecoregions, and minor hand-editing is required to make the EEZ intersect with the subregional boundary there. From the marine ecoregions layer, pull out the South Florida/Bahamian Atlantic Level 1 marine ecoregion. Use that selected South Florida ecoregion to split the bigger marine subregion created above into three distinct subregions: Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic, and South Florida Marine. Literature Cited Commission for Environmental Cooperation. 2009. Marine Ecoregions of North America, 2008.Vector digital data.Montréal, Québec, Canada. [http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/marine-ecoregions-level-iii/]. Flanders Marine Institute (2019). Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase: Maritime Boundaries and Exclusive Economic Zones (200NM), version 11. Available online at [https://www.marineregions.org/]. [https://doi.org/10.14284/386]. Moilanen, A., I. Kohonen, P. Lehtinen, I. Kivistö, J. Jalkanen, E. Virtanen, H. Kujala.March 2024. Zonation 5 v2.0 User Manual. [https://github.com/zonationteam/Zonation5/releases/download/v2.0/manual_and_example_setups.zip]. Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS). 2021. South Atlantic Extent and Subregions 2021. [https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/61002b01d34ef8d7055c7db2]. U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau, Geography Division, Spatial Data Collection and Products Branch. TIGER/Line Shapefile, 2021, U.S. Current State and Equivalent National. 2021. [https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html]. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Level IV Ecoregions of the Conterminous United States. U.S. EPA Office of Research & Development (ORD) - National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL). Corvallis, OR. Published April 16, 2013. [https://www.epa.gov/eco-research/level-iii-and-iv-ecoregions-continental-united-states]. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). National Watershed Boundary Dataset in FileGDB 10.1 format. Published July 28, 2020. [https://www.usgs.gov/national-hydrography/watershed-boundary-dataset]. CARIBBEAN SUBREGION The Caribbean portion of the Southeast Blueprint is composed of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and a subset of the surrounding marine environment.It was intended to cover as broad a swath as possible of the terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands given the data available.The Caribbean subregion serves as its own Zonation zone and is not further aggregated or subdivided. Input Data The Nature Conservancy's (TNC)Caribbean benthic habitat maps, accessed 12-21-2022:read a press release about the data;read a scientific journal article about the data;request to download the data National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Coastal Relief Model (Vol.9 - Puerto Rico), accessed 11-22-2022 NOAA U.S. Maritime Limits and Boundaries, accessed 11-22-2022 NOAA Continuously Updated Shoreline Product(CUSP), accessed 1-18-2023;read a 1-page factsheet about CUSP; view and download CUSP data in theNOAA Shoreline Data Explorer (to download, select "Download CUSP by Region" and select Southeast Caribbean) LANDFIRE 2020 (version 2.2.0) Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands: Existing Vegetation Type (EVT) Mapping StepsProcessing steps were performed in the QGIS v3.22 graphical modeler. Prepare the TNC benthic data by merging together the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico layers into one dataset using the DGDAL Merge utility. Using the Reclassify utility, reclassify the TNC benthic classes into a single class representing the extent of the TNC benthic analysis. Prepare the coastal relief data by importing the NetCDF file using the Import NetCDF function. Reclassify the coastal relief data to assign a value of 0 to elevations ranging from -10,000 to 0 and a value of 1 to elevations ranging from 0.0001 to 1,500. This separates out all land areas, which have an elevation >0. Prepare the U.S. maritime limits and boundaries data by selecting the marine boundaries for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Select all lines with a REGION field value of "Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands". Hand-edit the marine boundary lines to create marine boundary polygons. Fill in the holes in the marine boundary polygons, which represent land areas, using the Delete Holes utility. This creates a layer representing the combined land and sea jurisdiction of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Clip the processed coastal relief data to the Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands land and sea jurisdiction layer using the GDAL Clip utility. This step removes data in the British Virgin Islands, creating an elevation layer that distinguishes land and sea areas within Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Combine the U.S. Caribbean elevation layer with the TNC benthic data to create a preliminary extent using the Raster Boolean OR utility. The resulting layer includes all land pixels with an elevation >0 in NOAA's coastal relief model and all sea pixels assessed in TNC's benthic habitat layer. Convert that layer to vector using the GRASS Raster to Vector utility and extract the desired TNC benthic and land areas from the background values using Select by Attribute. The resulting layer has gaps in coverage between the land and TNC benthic ocean values. Remove holes <1,000,000 m2 (247 acres) using the Delete Holes utility. Use hand-digitizing to further modify the extent to include areas captured in the CUSP shoreline dataset. Use the CUSP line data to create a polygon covering Isla Desecheo, which was not included in the coastal relief model. Cricket Rock, Dutchcap Key, Cockroach Island, Mona Island and Isla Monita were all excluded from the coastal relief model but did have a marine extent included in the benthic habitat data. Guided by the CUSP shoreline data, hand-edit each of the polygons for these small islands to fill in the land areas. Convert the final vector dataset to raster using the GDAL Vector to Raster utility in QGIS and snap to the extent and cell size of the LANDFIRE 2020 EVT raster.Note: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available in theSoutheast Blueprint Data Downloadunder > 6_Code. Literature Cited Flanders Marine Institute (2019). Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase: Maritime Boundaries and Exclusive Economic Zones (200NM), version 11. Available online athttps://www.marineregions.org/. [https://doi.org/10.14284/386]. LANDFIRE, Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS), U.S. Geological Survey. Published August 1, 2022. LANDFIRE 2020 Existing Vegetation Type (EVT) Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands. LF 2020, raster digital data. Sioux Falls, SD. [https://www.landfire.gov]. National Geophysical Data Center, 2005. U.S. Coastal Relief Model - Puerto Rico. National Geophysical Data Center, NOAA. Accessed November 22, 2022. [https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/coastal-relief-model]. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Ocean Service, National Geodetic Survey. NOAA Continually Updated Shoreline Product (CUSP): Southeast Caribbean. [https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/data/cusp.html]. Schill SR, McNulty VP, Pollock FJ, Lüthje F, Li J, Knapp DE, Kington JD, McDonald T, Raber GT, Escovar-Fadul X, Asner GP. Regional High-Resolution Benthic Habitat Data from Planet Dove Imagery for Conservation Decision-Making and Marine Planning. Remote Sensing. 2021; 13(21):4215. [https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13214215]. COMBINING SUBREGIONS Input Data Continental inland subregions (created above) Continental marine subregions (created above) Caribbean subregions (created above) Mapping Steps Merge the continental inland, continental marine, and Caribbean subregions into one subregion file. Note: In 2024, we decided to use the same Blueprint extent as version 2023. This extent leaves out some estuarine areas in Virginia that are included in the TIGER/Lines state boundaries. In the future, we may want to extend the Blueprint to those areas, but in order to do that, we would first have to extend all our indicators to cover the new areas. Our approach to creating the 2024 subregions will allow us to do that in future iterations. However, to avoid confusion, for the Blueprint 2024 release, we are limiting the subregions back to the 2023 extent. Consequently, we do not include the larger subregion layer in the Blueprint 2024 download package, but rather save it ina project archive for future reference. To limit the 2024 subregions back to the 2023 Blueprint extent, convert the 2023 Southeast Blueprint extent raster to a polygon and union it with the subregions made above. Calculate an attribute identifying which areas were in the 2023 Southeast Blueprint extent, and export that as the final 2024 subregions layer. Add a new zone attribute and group the 2024 subregions into the zones that will be used in Zonation. The zones assignments are described in Table 2 above. The Caribbean subregion becomes its own zone and is not further aggregated or subdivided. Export the subregion vector file, the full Blueprint extent raster file (including the Caribbean), and the continental-only Blueprint raster extent files used in the 2024 Southeast Blueprint.Note: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available in theSoutheast Blueprint Data Downloadunder > 6_Code.
- Creator:
- Department of the Interior
- Provider:
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open Data
- Resource Class:
- Web services
- Temporal Coverage:
- 2024
- Date Issued:
- 2024-08-28
- Place:
- Rights:
- The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) shall not be held liable for improper or incorrect use of the data described and/or contained herein. While the Service makes every reasonable effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of data provided for distribution, it may not have the necessary accuracy or completeness required for every possible intended use. The Service recommends that data users consult the associated metadata record to understand the quality and possible limitations of the data. The Service creates metadata records in accordance with the standards endorsed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee. As a result of the above considerations, the Service gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the data. It is the responsibility of the data user to use the data in a manner consistent with the limitations of geospatial data in general and these data in particular. Although these data have been processed successfully on a computer system at the Service, no warranty, expressed or implied, is made regarding the utility of the data on another system or for general or scientific purposes, nor shall the act of distribution constitute any such warranty. This applies to the use of the data both alone and in aggregate with other data and information.
- Access Rights:
- Public
- Format:
- File
- Language:
- English
- Date Added:
- 2024-10-26