Mapping
The Big Picture - Understanding our Baseline
An important challenge for America’s Longleaf has been the lack of consistent range-wide data on existing longleaf forests and their condition. The historic range is immense and ongoing forestry practices change forest structure and composition constantly. Without accurate data, it is difficult to understand baseline conditions and measure success at large scales. However, lack of data shouldn’t paralyze a collaborative but instead inspire a method to collect it. FIA data was a key source of information during the inception of America’s Longleaf and continues to be a valuable and consistent resource to estimate the extent of longleaf. Fortunately, a focus on developing innovative new tools and data products in recent years has bolstered our ability to understand our baselines and strategic priorities. Through leveraging tools such as the Southeast Longleaf Ecosystem Occurrences Geodatabase (LEO) and Southeast FireMap, America’s Longleaf was able to develop a Longleaf Sustainability Analysis (LSA), which is a longleaf ecosystem-centric spatial analysis designed to facilitate the strategic, transparent, and evidence-based identification of the “right work” in the “right places” across the historic range of longleaf pine ecosystem. The LSA supports and guides America’s Longleaf priorities and actions.
Longleaf Mapping Projects: Southeast LEO and the LSA
Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI) works in partnership with the Longleaf Alliance to develop the LEO Geodatabase and LSA with funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) via the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, and in close conjunction with the Longleaf Partnership Council and other partners. The LEO GDB v2.2 and LSA v1 are available to ALRI partners. Full documentation and information as well as how to request access to the dataset are available here:
Longleaf Sustainability Analysis: https://www.fnai.org/species-communities/longleaf-lsa
Southeast LEO: https://www.fnai.org/species-communities/southeast-longleaf
Southeast Longleaf Ecosystems Occurrences Geodatabase (LEO GDB):
The Southeast Longleaf Ecosystems Occurrences Geodatabase (LEO GDB) is a comprehensive map database of documented longleaf pine locations and ecological conditions across the range. It integrates existing longleaf pine occurrence and condition data from multiple sources, including new ground-truth data collected for the project. The LEO GDB enables partners to track longleaf acres and condition and contributes to conservation and cost-share planning efforts at the LIT level and regionally. Data from the LEO GDB also informs the LSA.
The LEO GDB v2.2 is now available!
Longleaf Pine Sustainability Analysis (LSA v1):
This decision support tool maps priority classes for the conservation and management of existing longleaf and restoration of potential longleaf. These priorities identify areas where conservation, management and restoration of longleaf would contribute to connectivity and overall sustainability of longleaf pine systems. The LSA is currently used in the Southeast Conservation Blueprint and top priority areas for restoration can be found in the SERPPAS Good Map.
The LSA contains 3 categories of analysis that interact to prioritize places for both conservation and restoration of longleaf pine:
- Extant Longleaf Significance: A map layer of existing longleaf pine sites with ‘significance’ values based on factors related to ecological condition, wildlife value, and landscape context.
- Longleaf Pine Suitability: A range-wide map layer to identify high potential for restoration – values that represent a probability of suitability based on longleaf observation data and a combination of environmental variables including substrate, hydrology, fire regime, land cover, and climate.
- Sustainability: A sustainability map layer that weights and combines factors for landscape integrity, connectivity, ability to burn, and climate change resilience.
LSA v2 is in progress and is planned for release in 2027.
