FWC.landcov_CoopLandCover_fl_poly 52652.494000 799595.909900 45555.779100 781583.029700 1 002 Projected GCS_NAD_1983_2011 Linear Unit: Meter (1.000000) NAD_1983_2011_Florida_GDL_Albers <ProjectedCoordinateSystem xsi:type='typens:ProjectedCoordinateSystem' xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xs='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' xmlns:typens='http://www.esri.com/schemas/ArcGIS/3.3.0'><WKT>PROJCS["NAD_1983_2011_Florida_GDL_Albers",GEOGCS["GCS_NAD_1983_2011",DATUM["D_NAD_1983_2011",SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137.0,298.257222101]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0.0],UNIT["Degree",0.0174532925199433]],PROJECTION["Albers"],PARAMETER["False_Easting",400000.0],PARAMETER["False_Northing",0.0],PARAMETER["Central_Meridian",-84.0],PARAMETER["Standard_Parallel_1",24.0],PARAMETER["Standard_Parallel_2",31.5],PARAMETER["Latitude_Of_Origin",24.0],UNIT["Meter",1.0],AUTHORITY["EPSG",6439]]</WKT><XOrigin>-19550100</XOrigin><YOrigin>-7526400</YOrigin><XYScale>10000</XYScale><ZOrigin>0</ZOrigin><ZScale>1</ZScale><MOrigin>0</MOrigin><MScale>1</MScale><XYTolerance>0.001</XYTolerance><ZTolerance>0.001</ZTolerance><MTolerance>0.001</MTolerance><HighPrecision>true</HighPrecision><WKID>102967</WKID><LatestWKID>6439</LatestWKID></ProjectedCoordinateSystem> 20251203 13564700 20251203 13564700 20251203 14080500 1.0 FALSE FGDC 150000000 5000 dataset 20251203 ArcGIS Metadata 1.0 File Geodatabase Feature Class ArcGIS Pro 3.4 Cooperative Land Cover v4.0 2022-11-01T00:00:00 2025-04-30T00:00:00 4.01 20250615 Land Cover Map Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission-Fish and Wildlife Research Institute landcovermap <landcovermap@MyFWC.com> landcovermap@MyFWC.com Jon Oetting Florida Natural Areas Inventory Chief of Conservation Planning Services joetting@fnai.fsu.edu Edition Date: 2025 Suggested citation: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Florida Natural Areas Inventory. 2025. Cooperative Land Cover version 4.0 Vector. Tallahassee, FL. <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV>The Cooperative Land Cover Map is a project to develop an improved statewide land cover map from existing sources and expert review of aerial photography. The project is directly tied to a goal of Florida's State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) to represent Florida's diverse habitats in a spatially-explicit manner. The Cooperative Land Cover Map integrates 3 primary data types: 1) 6 million acres are derived from local or site-specific data sources, primarily on existing conservation lands. Most of these sources have a ground-truth or local knowledge component. We collected land cover and vegetation data from 37 existing sources. Each dataset was evaluated for consistency and quality and assigned a confidence category that determined how it was integrated into the final land cover map. 2) 1.4 million acres are derived from areas that FNAI ecologists reviewed with high resolution aerial photography. These areas were reviewed because other data indicated some potential for the presence of a focal community: scrub, scrubby flatwoods, sandhill, dry prairie, pine rockland, rockland hammock, upland pine or mesic flatwoods. 3) 3.2 million acres are represented by Florida Land Use Land Cover data from the FL Department of Environmental Protection and Water Management Districts (FLUCCS). The Cooperative Land Cover Map integrates data from the following years: NWFWMD: 2006 - 07 SRWMD: 2005 - 08 SJRWMD: 2004 SFWMD: 2004 SWFWMD: 2008 All data were crosswalked into the Florida Land Cover Classification System. This project was funded by a grant from FWC/Florida's Wildlife Legacy Initiative (Project 08009) to Florida Natural Areas Inventory. The current dataset is provided in 10m raster grid format.Changes from Version 1.1 to Version 2.3:CLC v2.3 includes updated Florida Land Use Land Cover for four water management districts as described above: NWFWMD, SJRWMD, SFWMD, SWFWMDCLC v2.3 incorporates major revisions to natural coastal land cover and natural communities potentially affected by sea level rise. These revisions were undertaken by FNAI as part of two projects: Re-evaluating Florida's Ecological Conservation Priorities in the Face of Sea Level Rise (funded by the Yale Mapping Framework for Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Adaptation) and Predicting and Mitigating the Effects of Sea-Level Rise and Land Use Changes on Imperiled Species and Natural communities in Florida (funded by an FWC State Wildlife Grant and The Kresge Foundation). FNAI also opportunistically revised natural communities as needed in the course of species habitat mapping work funded by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. CLC v2.3 also includes several new site specific data sources: New or revised FNAI natural community maps for 13 conservation lands and 9 Florida Forever proposals; new Florida Park Service maps for 10 parks; Sarasota County Preserves Habitat Maps (with FNAI review); Sarasota County HCP Florida Scrub-Jay Habitat (with FNAI Review); Southwest Florida Scrub Working Group scrub polygons. Several corrections to the crosswalk of FLUCCS to FLCS were made, including review and reclassification of interior sand beaches that were originally crosswalked to beach dune, and reclassification of upland hardwood forest south of Lake Okeechobee to mesic hammock. Representation of state waters was expanded to include the NOAA Submerged Lands Act data for Florida.Changes from Version 2.3 to 3.0: All land classes underwent revisions to correct boundaries, mislabeled classes, and hard edges between classes. Vector data was compared against high resolution Digital Ortho Quarter Quads (DOQQ) and Google Earth imagery. Individual land cover classes were converted to .KML format for use in Google Earth. Errors identified through visual review were manually corrected. Statewide medium resolution (spatial resolution of 10 m) SPOT 5 images were available for remote sensing classification with the following spectral bands: near infrared, red, green and short wave infrared. The acquisition dates of SPOT images ranged between October, 2005 and October, 2010. Remote sensing classification was performed in Idrisi Taiga and ERDAS Imagine. Supervised and unsupervised classifications of each SPOT image were performed with the corrected polygon data as a guide. Further visual inspections of classified areas were conducted for consistency, errors, and edge matching between image footprints. CLC v3.0 now includes state wide Florida NAVTEQ transportation data. CLC v3.0 incorporates extensive revisions to scrub, scrubby flatwoods, mesic flatwoods, and upland pine classes. An additional class, scrub mangrove – 5252, was added to the crosswalk. Mangrove swamp was reviewed and reclassified to include areas of scrub mangrove. CLC v3.0 also includes additional revisions to sand beach, riverine sand bar, and beach dune previously misclassified as high intensity urban or extractive. CLC v3.0 excludes the Dry Tortugas and does not include some of the small keys between Key West and Marquesas.Changes from Version 3.0 to Version 3.1: CLC v3.1 includes several new site specific data sources: Revised FNAI natural community maps for 31 WMAs, and 6 Florida Forever areas or proposals. This data was either extracted from v2.3, or from more recent mapping efforts. Domains have been removed from the attribute table, and a class name field has been added for SITE and STATE level classes. The Dry Tortugas have been reincorporated. The geographic extent has been revised for the Coastal Upland and Dry Prairie classes. Rural Open and the Extractive classes underwent a more thorough reviewChanges from Version 3.1 to Version 3.2:CLC v3.2 includes several new site specific data sources: Revised FNAI natural community maps for 43 Florida Park Service lands, and 9 Florida Forever areas or proposals. This data is from 2014 - 2016 mapping efforts. SITE level class review: Wet Coniferous plantation (2450) from v2.3 has been included in v3.2. Non-Vegetated Wetland (2300), Urban Open Land (18211), Cropland/Pasture (18331), and High Pine and Scrub (1200) have undergone thorough review and reclassification where appropriate. Other classification errors were opportunistically corrected as found or as reported by users to landcovermap@myfwc.com. Changes from Version 3.2.5 to Version 3.3: The CLC v3.3 includes several new site specific data sources: Revised FNAI natural community maps for 14 FWC managed or co-managed lands, including 7 WMA and 7 WEA, 1 State Forest, 3 Hillsboro County managed areas, and 1 Florida Forever proposal. This data is from the 2017 – 2018 mapping efforts. Select sites and classes were included from the 2016 – 2017 NWFWMD (FLUCCS) dataset. M.C. Davis Conservation areas, 18331x agricultural classes underwent a thorough review and reclassification where appropriate. Prairie Mesic Hammock (1122) was reclassified to Prairie Hydric Hammock (22322) in the Everglades. All SITE level Tree Plantations (18333) were reclassified to Coniferous Plantations (183332). The addition of FWC Oyster Bar (5230) features. Other classification errors were opportunistically corrected as found or as reported by users to landcovermap@myfwc.com, including classification corrections to sites in T.M. Goodwin and Ocala National Forest. CLC v3.3 utilizes the updated The Florida Land Cover Classification System (2018), altering the following class names and numbers: Irrigated Row Crops (1833111), Wet Coniferous Plantations (1833321) (formerly 2450), Major Springs (4131) (formerly 3118). Mixed Hardwood-Coniferous Swamps (2240) (formerly Other Wetland Forested Mixed).Changes from Version 3.4 to Version 3.5: The CLC v3.5 includes several new site specific data sources: Revised FNAI natural community maps for 16 managed areas, and 10 Florida Forever Board of Trustees Projects (FFBOT) sites. This data is from the 2019 – 2020 mapping efforts. Other classification errors were opportunistically corrected as found or as reported by users to landcovermap@myfwc.com. This version of the CLC is also the first to include land identified as Salt Flats (5241).Changes from Version 3.5 to 3.6: The CLC v3.6 includes several new site specific data sources: Revised FNAI natural community maps for 11 managed areas, and 24 Florida Forever Board of Trustees Projects (FFBOT) sites. This data is from the 2018 – 2022 mapping efforts. Other classification errors were opportunistically corrected as found or as reported by users to landcovermap@myfwc.com. Changes from Version 3.6 to 3.7: The CLC 3.7 includes several new site specific data sources: Revised FNAI natural community maps for 5 managed areas (2022-2023). Revised Palm Beach County Natural Areas data for Pine Glades Natural Area (2023). Other classification errors were opportunistically corrected as found or as reported by users to landcovermap@myfwc.com. In this version a few SITE level classifications are reclassified for the STATE level classification system. Mesic Flatwoods and Scrubby Flatwoods are classified as Dry Flatwoods at the STATE level. Upland Glade is classified as Barren, Sinkhole, and Outcrop Communities at the STATE level. Lastly Upland Pine is classified as High Pine and Scrub at the STATE level.Changes from Version 3.7 to 4.0: CLC 4.0 represents a major update to CLC performed cooperatively by FWC and FNAI via a State Wildlife Grant to address changes on the landscape such as conversion to development and to integrate other recent high quality land cover sources. CLC v4.0 includes FWC's comprehensive delineation of solar farms, FLUCCS updates based on aerial photos from 2017-2022, ground-truthed mapping from FNAI and Florida Park Service, a statewide update of Intensive Development from Google Dynamic World land cover as of 2024, and additional FNAI review and revisions of target classes including sand beach and beach dune. A complete description of updates is available in the Cooperative Land Cover version 4.0 report, available from FNAI or FWC. FInal edits were added by FWC reflecting additional solar farms and FNAI Natural Community surveys for 17 conservation areas; classification errors were opportunistically corrected as found or as reported by users to landcovermap@myfwc.com. </DIV></DIV></DIV> The purpose of the Cooperative Land Cover Map is to fill a priority data gap of Florida's State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) for improved habitat mapping. In addition it provides significantly improved data for scrub and sandhill, priority habitats of the SWAP. The map will inform a variety of conservation and management activities in Florida. Data compiled from multiple sources by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI). Land Cover Map Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission-Fish and Wildlife Research Institute Land Cover Map landcovermap@MyFWC.com Jon Oetting Florida Natural Areas Inventory Chief of Conservation Planning Services joetting@fnai.fsu.edu FWC Place Florida FWC Theme land cover Florida land cover <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV>Data are intended to be used for general informational and planning purposes and not appropriate for legal, regulatory and/or cadastral purposes. Additionally due to the inconsistencies in available aerial imagery and resource limitations the entire state is not reclassified on a regular time interval; therefore the authors of this data do not recommend comparing previous CLC iterations to denote any temporal changes in land use / landcover.</DIV></DIV></DIV> This data set is in the public domain, and the recipient may not assert any proprietary rights thereto nor represent it to anyone as other than a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission produced data set; it is provided "as-is" without warranty of any kind, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The user assumes all responsibility for the accuracy and suitability of this data set for a specific application. In no event will the staff of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission be liable for any damages, including lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising from the use of or the inability to use this data set. Available without restriction Esri ArcGIS Pro 3.4 false -87.639381 -79.813572 24.35359 31.042644 0.000000 0.000000 Full report for version 3.0 is available from FWC upon request if not supplied with these data. Full report for version 4.0 is available from FNAI or FWC upon request. 1 -87.639381 -79.813572 31.042644 24.353590 Vector Data Review, Editing, and Classification: The Cooperative Land Cover Map (CLC) served as the foundation dataset for revision efforts. Polygon vector data was compared against high resolution Digital Ortho Quarter Quads (DOQQ) and Google Earth imagery. Google Earth’s imagery was the most effective imagery available for visual data editing, due to its clarity, resolution, loading speed and data age. Vector data of individual land cover classes were converted to *.KML format for use in Google Earth. Errors identified through visual review were manually corrected. The most common errors encountered included incorrect boundaries, mislabeling of classes, hard edges between classes, and features containing multiple classes. Sliver polygons were eliminated based on two criteria: 1) Area 2) Perimeter to Area Ratio 1) Polygons with an area greater than or equal to 110 square meters were selected and dissolved into the largest adjacent polygon utilizing the Eliminate tool. 110 square meters was selected because the final raster will have a 10 meter cell size (100 square meters per cell) and the additional 10 square meters help to further remove sliver polygons that would require significant time to remove manually during the editing process. 2) Polygons with large ratios are less likely to accurately describe a significant landcover at the statewide scale. Therefore, polygons with a perimeter to edge ratio greater than or equal to 0.5 were eliminated into adjacent polygons sharing the longest edge. Remote Sensing Classification: Once gross spatial and thematic errors were corrected in the vector data, ERDAS Imagine was employed to perform a series of unsupervised and supervised classifications of each SPOT image with the corrected polygon data as a guide. Aerial Photography Review of Focal Communities: Areas within existing source data in categories 1 through 3 (non-ancillary sources) were excluded from the set of polygons to be reviewed. Scrub, scrubby flatwoods, sandhill, dry prairie and mesic flatwoods (in SWF and SF only) were reviewed simultaneously as a single set of review polygons. Review polygons as well as proximal areas were inspected with the latest high resolution aerial photography (2006 - 2009) and other ancillary data sources including aerial photography from 2004, 1999 and 1995, topographic maps, county soils maps and other land cover datasets. Areas were reviewed at a scale of 1:5000 with a minimum mapping unit of 0.5 acres with exception to include smaller polygons for scrub and pine rockland. Polygons were spatially edited and new polygons were delineated where necessary to identify focal communities and then assigned the polygon a land cover type. Polygons were deleted from the set of review polygons that did not represent priority communities and were otherwise correctly classified. A land cover type was assigned to polygons classified as FLUCCS Coastal Scrub, Xeric Oak, Sand Pine, or Longleaf Pine - Xeric Oak; in addition almost all review polygons in the SWF and SF districts were assigned a land cover type. Any deleted polygon will default to its FLUCCS class in the final land cover map. FNAI biologists familiar with the focal communities both on the ground and through aerial photo interpretation performed the initial polygon inspections. A second reviewer then re-inspected the polygons that were assigned as one of the focal communities. A locations were checked from the FNAI element occurrence database that reference scrub, scrubby flatwoods, sandhill or dry prairie. Areas were identified that appeared to be functioning as viable natural communities. Areas that were historically scrub or sandhill but are now disturbed so that they likely no longer support their characteristic ecological elements or that have succeeded to another natural community type were excluded or classified as another land cover type. Many former sandhills were reclassified as successional hardwood forest. Pine plantation was reclassified as scrub or sandhill where it appeared to function ecologically as a natural community. This was especially true of planted sand pine scrub which can tolerate a high degree of disturbance. Aerial photographs from 1995 and 1999 were examined to help determine the level of past ground disturbance. Small patches within residential areas were not included, although if there appeared to be functional large patches within low density or rural residential areas we included them. Only obvious patches of scrubby flatwoods were mapped. This community was sometimes difficult to distinguish from scrub and we did not follow strict criteria for distinguishing the two. For dry prairie we strictly followed the FNAI definition of treeless areas of low shrubs and grasses within the buffered historic dry prairie extent. Many prairie-like areas are pine flatwoods in which trees have been removed. To determine dry prairie from flatwoods we considered geographic position, shrub patterns, proximity of wetlands and overall landscape context. 2010-01-01T00:00:00 The Cooperative Land Cover map integrates data from multiple sources. All sources were crosswalked into the Florida Land Cover Classification System (Kawula 2014) All source datasets were received and processed as vector data. A set of standard geoprocessing and topology operations were employed in ArcGIS 9.3, 10.1 to ensure no overlapping features within or among datasets. All data were projected into the Florida Albers custom coordinate system with NAD 1983 HARN datum. A minimum mapping unit of 0.5 acres was applied, and each polygon < 0.5 acres was dissolved into its largest neighboring polygon except for scrub, pine rockland and upland glade polygons for which we applied a minimum mapping unit of 0.1 acres. Finally, lines between neighboring polygons with the same classification were dissolved. Based on the review of each dataset, other modifications were made as described in: Florida Natural Areas Inventory, 2010. Development of a Cooperative Land Cover Map: Final Report (available from FNAI upon request). Explanation of confidence categories: Datasets were evaluated based on metadata, discussions with data providers and a general review of the spatial accuracy and classification. Based on this review, a confidence category was assigned to each dataset that indicated how or if the dataset, or certain classes within the dataset, would be integrated into the final land cover map. A confidence category of 1 indicates the highest level of confidence; these data spatially superseded all other intersecting sources. Category 2 data took precedence over statewide datasets (FLUCCS, FLVEG) but did not supersede category 1. Category 3 data were used with review and revision. Category 4 data were used to identify additional areas for aerial photo review and help interpret classification during the review process; these data, however, were not directly integrated into the final map. 2010-01-01T00:00:00 Assemblage of Data Sources into Final Map: The data was separated into 3 components for assembly into statewide land cover: 1) Local Source data, which consisted of all local sources with confidence category 1 through 3; 2) FNAI Review data, which consisted of all datasets that were inspected and classified through aerial photo review; and 3) FLUCCS. The SWFWMD published a new version of FLUCCS based on 2008 photography in spring 2010. Although we used 2007 FLUCCS for aerial photo review and comparative analyses in that district, we incorporated the 2008 data in the final land cover map. We converted all datasets into 15 m ESRI grids and combined them based on the following rules: 1) Local Source data with confidence category 1 and 2 superseded FNAI Review data; 2) FNAI Review data superseded Local Source data with confidence category 3; 3) all Local Source 1 through 3 and FNAI Review data superseded FLUCCS. 2010-01-01T00:00:00 Edge Matching: Following map classification, we conducted further visual inspection of classified areas for consistency, errors, and edge matching between assembled data sets. 2014-01-01T00:00:00 Topology: Rules were established to ensure that: 1) all areas within the mapping area (i.e. Florida) are covered by a land class (polygon); and 2) that there is only one land class (polygon) defining a given area. Two topological rules were created to ensure these requirements are met: 1) Land Classes Must Not Have Gaps 2) Land Classes Must Not Overlap For errors that result from “Land Classes Must Not Have Gaps”, a polygon was created to fill that gap. This new polygon created NULL information in the attributes and must either: 1) be merged with an appropriate adjacent polygon sharing the same land classification characteristics or 2) be given a land classification indicating its uniqueness in comparison with adjacent polygons. For errors that resulted from “Land Classes Must Not Overlap”, areas were identified that have more than one polygon. The overlapping area was merged with the most appropriate land class, thereby removing the overlap. 2014-01-01T00:00:00 Sliver removal: Rules were established remove small sliver polygons (see report for all rules). All polygons <0.01 acres that were not existing oyster bars, were merged (by process of the eliminate tool) into their largest neighbor. Topology rules, using a tolerance of 0.5 following the FWC standard for CLC, were applied to prevent gaps and overlaps. 2025-06-15T00:00:00 Changes from Version 4.0 to 4.01, 4.02: CLC 4.01 includes minor changes, primarily clean-up of small sliver polygons. CLC 4.02 was set to match the CLC 3.8 extent, and resolved multi-part polygons into single part. 2025-08-07T00:00:00 2159539 EPSG 8.2.10(10.3.1) 8.2.10(10.3.1) FWC.landcov_CoopLandCover_fl_poly Feature Class 2159539 Land Use/ Land Cover Florida Land Use Cover and Forms Classification OBJECTID OBJECTID OID 4 10 0 Internal feature number. Esri Sequential unique whole numbers that are automatically generated. SHAPE Shape Geometry 8 0 0 Feature geometry. Esri Coordinates defining the features. NAME_SITE NAME_SITE String 80 0 0 Description of CLC class assigned to polygon. Classification is based on the Florida Land Cover Classification System (https://myfwc.com/research/gis/wildlife/land-cover-classification/). FWC SITE SITE Integer 4 10 0 Numeric code of CLC class assigned to polygon. Classification is based on the Florida Land Cover Classification System (https://myfwc.com/research/gis/wildlife/land-cover-classification/). FWC STATE STATE Integer 4 10 0 NAME_STATE NAME_STATE String 80 0 0 created_user created_user String 255 0 0 created_date created_date Date 8 0 0 last_edited_user last_edited_user String 255 0 0 last_edited_date last_edited_date Date 8 0 0 Shape.STArea() Shape.STArea() Double 0 0 0 Shape.STLength() Shape.STLength() Double 0 0 0 Simple FALSE 2159539 TRUE FALSE