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Higher values indicate large expanses of remote, intact natural and semi-natural areas such as the Everglades or the Apalachicola and Ocala National Forests. Lower values indicate more fragmented landscapes with increasingly intensive land uses from agriculture to urban development. Generally, values of 1-3 are considered to have little to no ecological integrity; values of 4-7 are considered to have moderate ecological integrity; and values of 8-10 are considered to have high ecological integrity. This data layer was created by the University of Florida Center for Landscape Conservation Planning specifically for CLIP. It combines two models: natural land cover patch size and land use intensity. Both are based on the FNAI/FWC Cooperative Land Cover (CLC) data layer, and major roads data from the Florida Department of Transportation (which are used to help delineate patches). Unlike most of the CLIP core data layers, the Landscape Integrity Index is a continuous scale, from intensive urban areas to remote natural areas, that covers the entire state. |