U.S. Fish & Wildlife ServiceDefinition This indicator identifies habitat quality across the Midwest Landscape. It prioritizes areas based on proximity to natural or non-natural landcover types, plus intensity of land use. Pixels can take the following values: 1 - Heavily altered landscape 2 - Altered landscape 3 - Partly natural landscape 4 - Mostly natural landscape 5 - Natural landscape 6 - Very natural landscape Selection This indicator was chosen as a targetable, important feature of the MLI goals that will be used to track conditions over time and prioritize areas for conservation. Indicators were defined through elicitation and prioritization exercises with federal and state participants. Criteria for the indicators includes 1) actionable, 2) measurable, 3) relevant to multiple groups across the region, and/or 4) representative of other social and/or environmental values. Input Data & Mapping Steps This indicator originates from the National Land Cover Database, Maus et al. Global-scale mining polygons, LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation Type, and the Midwest Conservation Blueprint Grasslands indicator. To create this layer, MLI partners, members, and staff completed the following mapping steps: projected all input data to NAD83 (2011) UTM Zone 15N, reclassified NLCD into three categories: 1 - Heavily altered, 2 - Altered, and 3 - Natural. Next, we classified all mining polygons as 2 - Altered, and classified all LANDFIRE "Quarries-Strip Mines-Gravel Pits-Well and Wind Pads" and "Northeastern North American Temperate Forest Plantation" pixels as 2 - Altered. Then, we extracted likely grassland pixels and classified them as 3 - Natural, mosaiced all rasters into a single layer, and used Focal statistics to calculate and average the alteration of the landscape over three spatial scales. The final raster contains the following classes: 1 - Heavily altered landscape, 2 - Altered landscape, 3 - Partly natural landscape, 4 - Mostly natural landscape, 5 - Natural landscape, 6 - Very natural landscape. Finally, highly altered areas were removed using our Highly Altered Areas Mask. For full mapping details, please refer to the Midwest Conservation Blueprint Development Process . For a complete download of all Blueprint input and output data, visit the M idwest Conservation Blueprint 2026 Data Download.ArcGIS ImageMapLayerhttps://hub.arcgis.com/datasets/d69c6c8310d9487d96316d26a3f3b72eengU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open DataPublicIntact Habitat Cores - Landscape Condition (Midwest Conservation Blueprint 2026 Indicator) [United States]Web servicesUnited States2026