Upland Hardwood Forest Management Opportunities

The purpose of this data set is support resource allocation decisions (i.e. where to invest conservation effort) within the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative. The Management Opportunity action map for the Upland Hardwoods (Forest) habitat system ranks pixels (250-m) for 3 general classes of conservation actions. Maintenance pixels (values 7-9) are currently estimated to meet the site condition Endpoints in the GCPO LCC’s draft Integrated Science Agenda (v4). Enhancement pixels (values 4-6) are those that are currently classified as Upland Hardwoods (Forest) but do not meet the site condition Endpoints in the Science Agenda. Restoration pixels (values1-3) are those that are currently in a different land use but are appropriate for Upland Hardwoods (Forest) according to a potential habitat data set.  Ranks within the Maintenance and Enhancement classes are based on the values for landscape conditions, whereas ranks within the Restoration class are based on a strategy of defragmenting landscapes. Please see PDF file in the Forested Wetland folder in the Blueprint Gallery at https://gcpolcc.databasin.org/ for a full description of the process used to build the index.