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FWC Home : Wildlife & Habitats : Wildlife Legacy Initiative : Performance Measures and Monitoring : Habitat

Habitat Monitoring

Habitat data are collected as a part of the Peace River Fish Assemblage project
Habitat data are collected as a part of the Peace River Fish Assemblage project, a joint effort of FWLI, HSC, FFM, FWRI, SWFWMD & UF. Photo courtesy of Ed Call, FWC.

Vegetation monitoring
Vegetation  monitoring. FWC photo.

Divers collect data
Divers collect data for FWRI's Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project, which will be a component of this project. Photo courtesy of FWRI.

Seagrass monitoring efforts
Many seagrass monitoring efforts will be integrated into FWRI's Seagrass Integrated Mapping and Monitoring Project, contributing to this effort. Photo by Randy Havens, FWC.

Apple snails in a Weeki Wachee spring sample.
Apple snails in a Weeki Wachee spring sample. Photo courtesy of Wetland Solutions, Inc.

Project Update

Monitoring is an essential component of adaptive management, allowing us to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation actions and demonstrate success. One goal of Florida's Wildlife Legacy Initiative is to develop a coordinated, statewide habitat monitoring system for tracking the health of our six priority habitats (sandhill, scrub, softwater streams, springs, coral reefs, and seagrass).

Existing FWC and partner programs already monitor these habitats, but not in a coordinated manner statewide. We are building upon these efforts to form a shared system for collectively analyzing and reporting monitoring information.

Through a series of workshops in 2008, FWC staff and partners identified and ranked the most important indicators of the health of each priority habitat, and identified existing monitoring efforts that could contribute data on the top indicators. Results from this planning phase are now available: download the report or download the executive summary.

This year FWLI will begin integrating and collectively analyzing the monitoring data sources selected for initial inclusion in this project. The report completed this December will  provide for the first time a scientifically-based statewide perspective on the extent and health of six of Florida's most imperiled habitats. FWLI & FWC staff and partners will be able to use this tool to help prioritize conservation efforts within these habitats and demonstrate success.

The success of this project is due to the contributions of many partners willing to share their time, expertise, data and resources to ensure that this tool will be a valuable resource with the flexibility to meet many needs.

For more information, please contact Kelly Rezac.

From the Strategy

Habitat Monitoring

Public agencies and private entities involved in managing conservation lands currently utilize Geographic Information Systems (GIS) systems to monitor land use and habitat types or land cover on areas they manage. Use of the GIS systems makes it possible to more effectively plan management actions and monitor changes to habitats at the landscape scale throughout the state and at regional and local scales as well. One conservation goal for this Strategy will be to continue and expand use of these GIS systems to monitor habitats and more effectively and efficiently coordinate and integrate conservation actions at the landscape level and other levels, whenever appropriate. More...

Conservation actions undertaken through programs such as Florida Forever(FDEP), Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI), and the Strategic Habitat Conservation Areas (SHCAs) help to ensure that high priority lands throughout Florida are conserved wherever possible (See Chapter State of the State). Through these programs, important natural areas can be conserved by direct land acquisitions, acquisition of conservation easements, and incentives and cost shares for conservation on private lands. Programs such as these have proven to be successful in the past and will continue to play an important role in the conservation of Florida's wildlife and their habitats as Florida implements this Strategy. The FWC can measure the relative increase in habitat conservation addressed in the Strategy by assessing the percentage of lands protected; if the percentage increases, that can demonstrate successful implementation of the Strategy. Ultimately, targets for evaluating success should be set, with conservation priorities for habitats identified and finalized. Use of these performance measures and targets will make it possible to produce reasonably accurate quantitative assessments of habitat conservation, in terms of preservation or loss.

In addition to monitoring areas of habitats that are conserved, it is important to monitor habitat conditions and the quality of those habitats. This monitoring need is addressed in conservation actions throughout the Strategy. The goal for these actions will be to ensure that suitable habitat management techniques are employed to maintain appropriate habitat quality. Currently, no statewide habitat quality performance measures exist, but work is underway on developing and testing schemes such as the FWC's Objective-Based Vegetation Management system (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission 2004) and public (FDEP) and private efforts to monitor success in burning of fire-dependent landscapes.

A further subject for habitat monitoring will be to evaluate conservation actions addressing the issue of habitat conversion. Again, GIS is used for these actions to monitor habitat conversion at the landscape scale. The 2003 Florida Vegetation and Land Cover GIS Data, which was developed by the FWC (Stys et al. 2004), is the most comprehensive statewide assessment of current land covers and habitat conditions; this GIS coverage is based upon 2003 Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper satellite imagery (Stys et al. 2004). These GIS data, when combined with appropriate ground truthing, provide a useful tool by which to monitor relatively small-scale changes in habitat condition (land cover) that result from habitat conversion. The quantitative nature of GIS makes it possible to  measure amounts of land converted from one habitat type to another. Decreasing conversion rates of key habitats will be indicative of successful implementation of conservation actions. Although currently not available, similar mapping efforts can be developed for freshwater and marine habitats.

 

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