TITLE: FINAL DETERMINATION CRITICAL HABITAT UNITS FOR WINTERING PIPING PLOVER (CHARADRIUS MELODUS) IN FLORIDA

Geodataset Name:       PIPLCH_FL_FNL
Geodataset Type:       SHAPEFILE
Geodataset Feature:    POLYGON

This geospatial dataset shows the piping plover critical
habitat units on its wintering grounds in Florida. The
units were created by generalizing the buffered mapped
critical habitat shoreline in an attempt to capture the
dynamics of these systems to the recovery date of 2020.
Mapped critical habitat shoreline was created by
"on-screen"/"heads-up" digitizing based on 1994-95 Color
Infrared Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quads at 1, 3, or 6
meter resolution.

DATA SOURCE(S):                    U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
SCALE OF ORIGINAL SOURCE MAPS:     1:12,000
DATE OF AUTOMATION OF SOURCE:      April 2001
GEODATASET EXTENT:                 State of Florida

FEATURE ATTRIBUTE TABLES:

Datafile Name: PIPLCH_FL_FNL.DBF

FEATURE ATTRIBUTE TABLES CODES AND VALUES:

Item	Item Description
FID	Internal feature number.
Shape	Feature geometry.
AREA	Area of polygon
PERIMETER	Perimeter of polygon
CH_UNIT	Critical Habitat Unit
UNIT	Critical Habitat Unit Number
CH_NAME	Critical Habitat Unit Name
STATE_ABBR	State Abbreviation
CNTY_NAME	County Name
OWNERSHIP	General Land Owner Category
HECTARES	Unit Area in Hectares
ACRES	Unit Acreage Equivalent
Descript	FGDL added field based on CH_NAME

USER NOTES:

GeoPlan relied on the integrity of the attribute information within the original data.

Piping plovers (Charadrius melodus) are federally listed shorebirds breeding along the north Alantic Coast, the Northern Great Plains, and the Great Lakes regions. The Great Lakes population is federally listed as endangered, while the Atlantic and Northern Great Plains populations are listed as threatened. Piping plovers are considered threatened on their wintering grounds. In the United States these populations winter along the Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina south, along the Gulf coast to Texas, and the Carribean. Piping plovers spend the majority of the year on the wintering grounds. Due to the difficulty of seperating out the populations of piping plover (Great Lakes, Northern Great Plains, and Atlantic) when on their wintering grounds, critical habitat was designated for all wintering piping plover. Critical habitat are areas considered essential for the conservation of a listed species. These areas provide notice to the public and land managers the importance of these areas to the conservation of this species. It does not afford any special protection or restriction other than where federal funding, permits, licenses, authorizations, or actions occur or are required.

A note concerning data scale: Scale is an important factor in data usage. Certain scale datasetsare not suitable for some project, analysis, or modelling 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. 1:250000 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 analyses. Every effort has been made to supply the user with data documentation. For additional information, see the References sectionand the Data Source Contact section of this documentation. For more information regarding scale and accuracy, see our web pages at: http://www.geoplan.ufl.edu/education.html

REFERENCES:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services: http://www.fws.gov/

DATA LINEAGE SUMMARY:

This data set was created using Arc/Info 7.1.2 and ArcView3.1 on a Sun ULTRA2 workstation. The process steps for creating the unit boundaries were as follows: 1. The mapped critical habitat shoreline shapefile was converted into an Arc/Info line coverage. No subclass was defined. 2. The projection was defined 3. If necessary the coverage was reprojected into the desired projection 4. The line coverage was dissolved based on the #ALL option 5. A buffer table was created for the state being processed 6. The buffer table was populated from a ascii text file 7. The line coverage was buffered 8. The buffer coverage was generalized using BENDSIMPLIFY operator The generalized coverage was clipped by the proposed unit boundaries (Note: Where changes were needed that extended outside the proposed unit boundary - the proposed unit boundary was edited in ArcView & converted into a A/I coverage & built as a polygon) 10. The item CH_UNIT was added to the clipped coverage's .pat CH_UNIT was populated in ArcView 12. The clipped coverage was dissolved based on CH_UNIT item An expansion table was created that contained unit information The expansion table was populated from an ascii text The expansion table was joined to the unit coverage's .pat created by the dissolve in step 13 based on CH_UNIT item Values for HECTARES & ACRES were calculated in TABLES 17. The newly created draft unit boundary coverage was brought into ArcView and converted to a shapefile. 18. The unit boundary shapefile was reviewed and edits were made based on the comments to create the final unit boundary layer. Process Date: 20010112

MAP PROJECTION PARAMETERS:

Projection                          ALBERS
Datum                               HPGN
Units                               METERS
Spheroid                            GRS1980
1st Standard Parallel               24  0  0.000
2nd Standard Parallel               31 30  0.000
Central Meridian                   -84 00  0.000
Latitude of Projection's Origin     24  0  0.000
False Easting (meters)              400000.00000
False Northing (meters)             0.00000

DATA SOURCE CONTACT (S):

Name:
Abbr. Name:
Address:


Phone:

Web site:
E-mail:
Contact Person:
         Phone:
        E-mail:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
USFWS
1601 Balboa Ave.
Panama City, FL
32405
850/769-0552 x230


http://www.fws.gov/
paul_lang@fws.gov
Paul A. Lang

Name:                   FLORIDA GEOGRAPHIC DATA LIBRARY
Abbr. Name:             FGDL
Address:                Florida Geographic Data Library
                        431 Architecture Building
                        PO Box 115706
                        Gainesville, FL  32611-5706
Web site:               http://www.fgdl.org

Contact FGDL: 

      Technical Support:	        http://www.fgdl.org/fgdlfeed.html
      FGDL Frequently Asked Questions:  http://www.fgdl.org/fgdlfaq.html
      FGDL Mailing Lists:		http://www.fgdl.org/fgdl-l.html
      For FGDL Software:                http://www.fgdl.org/software.html