The Florida Ecological Greenways Network (FEGN) is part of the legislatively adopted Florida Greenways Plan administered by the Office of Greenways and Trails (OGT) in the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (Florida Statutes, Chapter 260). The FEGN was delineated as the ecological component of a Statewide Greenways System plan developed by the DEP Office of Greenways and Trails (OGT) and University of Florida, under guidance from the Florida Greenways Coordinating Council and the Florida Greenways and Trails Council. The FEGN guides OGT ecological greenway conservation efforts, and promotes public awareness of the need for and benefits of a statewide ecological greenways network. It is also used as the primary data layer to inform the Florida Forever and other state and regional land acquisition programs regarding the location of the most important conservation corridors and large, intact landscapes in the state.
The FEGN identifies areas of opportunity for protecting a statewide network of ecological hubs and linkages designed to maintain large landscape-scale ecological functions including focal species habitat and ecosystem services throughout the state. The FEGN aggregates various data identifying areas of ecological significance from the Florida Natural Areas Inventory, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, existing and proposed conservation lands, and other relevant data. These data were combined to identify large, landscape-scale areas of ecological significance (ecological hubs), and a network of landscape linkages and corridors connecting the hubs into a statewide ecological greenways system (ecological greenways and wildlife corridors).
In 2008, for the Critical Lands and Waters Identification Project (http://www.centurycommission.org/current_projects.asp), two additional priority levels were added to the existing FEGN priority classes as a strategic subset of the original Priority 1 and Priority 2 areas. These two new highest priority classes, Critical Linkages 1 and Critical Linkages 2, were delineated by identifying the areas within Priority 1 and Priority 2 linkages that were considered most important for completing a statewide ecological network of public and private conservation lands. These Critical Linkages were reviewed and accepted by the CLIP Technical Advisory Group as part of the development of the CLIP database and identification of CLIP statewide conservation priorities. These new priorities were also accepted by the Florida Greenways and Trails Council in December 2008. All priority levels within the FEGN are potentially important at the regional and local scales for identifying large, connected landscapes and wildlife corridors, but Critical Linkages 1 and 2 and Priority 1 and 2 Linkages collectively are the areas with the highest state and regional significance.
publication date
1) These data were created using input data consistent with 24,000 to 1:100,000 map scale resolution. Such data are of sufficient resolution for state and regional scale conservation planning. They are not appropriate for use in high accuracy mapping applications such as property parcel boundaries, local government comprehensive plans, zoning, DRI, site plans, environmental resource or other agency permitting, wetland delineations, or other uses requiring more specific and ground survey quality data. 2) The analysis, maps and data on this website were developed for state and regional conservation planning purposes and are not intended, nor sufficient, to be the basis for local government comprehensive plans, environmental resource or agency permitting decisions. 3) These data are likely to be regularly updated and it is the responsibility of the user to obtain the most recent available version of the database. 4) Data should not be transferred to a third party, in data or map form, without noting these disclaimers.
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Florida Ecological Greenways Network Source was created by the University of Florida GeoPlan Center and Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Office of Greenways & Trails
GeoPlan relied on the integrity of the attribute information within the original data.
This data is provided 'as is'. GeoPlan relied on the integrity of the original data layer's topology
This data is provided 'as is' by GeoPlan and is complete to our knowledge.
This data is provided 'as is' and its horizontal positional accuracy has not been verified by GeoPlan
This data is provided 'as is' and its vertical positional accuracy has not been verified by GeoPlan
Spatial and Attribute Information
The adoption of new base boundaries of the Florida Ecological Greenways Network (FEGN) in 2004 by the Florida Greenways and Trails Council resulted in additions to the FEGN that were not prioritized since the first delineation of priorities completed in 2002 preceded the boundary update. There were three primary goals of reprioritization: 1) Delineate priority classes for new additions to the FEGN adopted in 2004. 2) Simplify priority classes to solidify the identity of the areas most important for completing a statewide FEGN. 3) Determine whether any changes in priority classes are warranted especially regarding Critical Linkages. There were three major steps undertaken to reprioritize the FEGN. The first step assigned priority classes to the FEGN additions based on the nearest and connected existing priority class. The second step combined the original priority classes 2 and 3 into one new priority 2 class. This resulted in 6 priority classes versus the original 7 classes. The final step included all of the additional recommended changes in priority classes based on re-assessment of development pressure, logical consolidations or other edits of priority boundaries, and new conservation projects relevant to protecting the high priorities within the FEGN. A draft set of changes were presented in a technical review meeting in August 2005 with staff from Florida Natural Areas Inventory, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Water Management Districts, and the Florida Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. Their recommendations for modifying the draft reprioritization were the primary basis for the proposed priority changes. However, some minor additional changes were added based on further analysis by the University of Florida and the Office of Greenways and Trails. The process used to develop the updated Ecological Greenways Network priorities is described in much more detail in the prioritization update report (Hoctor and Carr 2005), which is available from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Office of Greenways and Trails or can be downloaded at www.geoplan.ufl.edu. This update of the Florida Ecological Greenways Network (FEGN) was needed to address changes in the base boundary of the FEGN that was adopted by the Florida Greenways and Trails Council in 2004. For more information, see the report by the University of Florida for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Office of Greenways and Trails titled "Reprioritization of the Florida Ecological Greenways Network based on the New Base Boundaries Adopted in 2004".
Two additional priority levels were added to the existing FEGN priority classes as a strategic subset of the original Priority 1 and Priority 2 areas. These two new highest priority classes, Critical Linkages 1 and Critical Linkages 2, were delineated by identifying the areas within Priority 1 and Priority 2 linkages that were considered most important for completing a statewide ecological network of public and private conservation lands.
GeoPlan QaQc team received this data from Tom Hoctor in May 2008. The data was in Albers HPGN projection. The following QaQc procedures were carried out: - Added DESCRIPT field based on VALUE. - Added FGDLAQDATE based on date received
Internal feature number.
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Priority Rank
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Critical Linkages 1: These Critical Linkages, which are a subset of the original Priority 1 linkages, are critical for completing a connection between existing conservation lands. Critical Linkages 1 are defined as areas with very high ecological significance while also being most threatened by development.
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Critical Linkages 2: These Critical Linkages, which are a subset of the original Priority 2 linkages, are critical for completing a connection between existing conservation lands. Critical Linkages 1 and 2 together would complete a statewide ecological network containing the most important large intact landscapes and best connection opportunities
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Priority 1: These are the remaining areas of Priority 1 linkages not included within Critical Linkages 1
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Priority 2: These are the remaining areas of Priority 2 linkages not included within Critical Linkages 2.
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Priority 3: Priority 3 linkages provide significant alternate routes to higher priority linkages.
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Priority 4: Most Priority 4 linkages provide important riparian corridors within Florida and to other states. One Priority 4 linkage is needed to protect the northern half of the St. Johns Florida black bear population.
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Priority 5: Priority 5 linkages represent other regionally significant opportunities to protect large intact landscapes.
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Priority 6: Includes all other areas of large intact landscapes that support protection of a statewide ecological network.
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Number of cells within the priority level
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GeoPlan added field based on Value
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Date GeoPlan acquired data from source.
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The Florida Geographic Data Library is a collection of Geospatial Data compiled by the University of Florida GeoPlan Center with support from the Florida Department of Transportation. GIS data available in FGDL is collected from various state, federal, and other agencies (data sources) who are data stewards, producers, or publishers. The data available in FGDL may not be the most current version of the data offered by the data source. University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no guarantees about the currentness of the data and suggests that data users check with the data source to see if more recent versions of the data exist. Furthermore, the GIS data available in the FGDL are provided 'as is'. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no warranties, guaranties or representations as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of the data provided by the data sources. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center makes no representations or warranties about the quality or suitability of the materials, either expressly or implied, including but not limited to any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. The University of Florida GeoPlan Center shall not be liable for any damages suffered as a result of using, modifying, contributing or distributing the materials. A note about data scale: Scale is an important factor in data usage. Certain scale datasets are not suitable for some project, analysis, or modeling purposes. Please be sure you are using the best available data. 1:24000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the county level. 1:24000 data should NOT be used for high accuracy base mapping such as property parcel boundaries. 1:100000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the multi-county or regional level. 1:125000 scale datasets are recommended for projects that are at the regional or state level or larger. Vector datasets with no defined scale or accuracy should be considered suspect. Make sure you are familiar with your data before using it for projects or analysis. Every effort has been made to supply the user with data documentation. For additional information, see the References section and the Data Source Contact section of this documentation. For more information regarding scale and accuracy, see our webpage at: http://geoplan.ufl.edu/education.html
431 Architecture PO Box 115706
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