stewardship



	Center For Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) THE ARKANSAS GAP ANALYSIS PROJECT FINAL REPORT LAND STEWARDSHIP TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. LANDCOVER CLASSIFICATION AND MAPPING 3. PREDICTED ANIMAL DISTRIBUTIONS AND SPECIES RICHNESS 4. LAND STEWARDSHIP 4.1. A National Perspective 4.1.1. Land Ownership and Management Status In Arkansas 4.2. Methods 4.2.1. Public Land Ownership Mapping 4.2.2. Management Status 4.3. Results 4.4. Limitations and Discussion 5. ANALYSIS BASED ON STEWARDSHIP AND MANAGEMENT STATUS 6. CONCLUSIONS AND MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS 7. DATA USE AND AVAILABILITY 8. LITERATURE CITED 9. GLOSSARY 10. GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS 11. APPENDICES AND MAPS 4.1. A National Perspective To fulfill the analytical mission of gap analysis, it is necessary to compare the mapped distribution of elements of biodiversity with their representation in various categories of management (status) within each land ownership class. As will be explained in the Analysis section, these comparisons do not measure viability, but are a start to assessing the likelihood of future threat to a biotic element through habitat conversion, the primary cause of biodiversity decline. It is recognized that legal ownership does not necessarily equate to the management status employed, another entity may be charged with the management of the resource, and that the mix of ownership and managing entities is a complex condition. The purpose of comparing biotic distribution with ownership is to provide a method by which land owners can assess their relative amount of opportunity for the management of a species or plant community. This information can reveal opportunities for cooperative management of that resource. The primary mission of gap anlaysis is to provide objective, scientific information to decision makers and managers to make informed decisions regarding biodiversity. We emphasize, however, that gap analysis not only categories public lands but treats private land as a homogenous category and does not differentiate individual tracts or owners, unless the information was provided voluntarily to recognize a permanent commitment to biodiversity maintenance.



	After comparison to ownership, it is also necessary to compare biotic occurrence to categories of management status. While it will eventually be desirable to identify specific management practices for each tract, and whether they are beneficial or harmful to each element, gap analysis currently uses a scale of 1-4 to denote relative degree of maintenance of biodiversity for each tract. A status of "1" denotes the highest, most permanent level of maintenance, and "4" represents the lowest level of biodiversity management, or unknown status. This is a highly subjective area, and we recognize a variety of limitations in our approach, although we maintain certain principles in assigning the status level. 4.1.1. Land Ownership and Management Status In Arkansas In Arkansas, there is no one single entity that is responsible for maintaining a comprehensive inventory of all public lands. Thirteen states and federal agencies located in Arkansas were identified as potential sources for ownership boundary maps. The AR-GAP land ownership map and the management status map represent the very first effort to accurately map all the public lands in Arkansas at a scale of 1:100,000. These data sets will be placed in public domain for access by cooperating agencies and other interested parties. An initial survey, in the spring of 1993, revealed significant problems that had to be addressed prior to mapping ownership and management status. A majority of ownership information was only available on paper maps most of which were dated and lacking necessary geodetic information for registration prior to digitizing. First, there were very few `digital' data sets of public land ownership boundaries that were complete. The most complete digital data sets were the Wildlife Management Area (WMA) provided by the AGFC Real Estate Department. Some existing data sets such as the WMAs were simple polygons whose topology was easily checked while others such as the U.S. Forest Service National Forest contained many thousands of polygons each which had to be manually checked for its topology. Secondly, the available data sets were in many different formats, projections, and datum. In the case of the U.S. Forest Service National Forest: Ozark, Ouachita, and St. Francis, data sets needed extensive post editing and relabeling following reprojection into the desired datum. Editing the mix of ownership and land types within the national forests in Arkansas were especially time consuming and required additional ancillary date sources. Because of variable seasonal water levels around lakes the use of the water layer from landsat imagery was complicated, shorelines did not always match ownership boundaries and required additional editing. Thirdly, in the case of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (COE), it became clear that there were simply no available data sets of ownership nor any clear and concise avenue to this information. The only information available was the actual survey plats of each parcel of land owned by the COE. For example one single COE Lake might contain thousands of ownership plats; there are at least 24 lakes which potentially have COE property bordering them and many of the major rivers in Arkansas have COE lands associated with them for various land uses. The effort required to register and then digitize these many thousands of land parcels owned by the COE was simply beyond the scope of the AR-GAP project. The COE areas that are mapped were usually supplied as part of another map set by agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, or the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission or other forms of ancillary data was obtained from sources



	other than the COE. To further compound the issue there are three separate COE districts in Arkansas each with its own separate administrative structure to deal with. And lastly, it was clear that there are many `local' private sector entities that practice some type of conservation (e.g. hunting clubs and foundations) on private lands. Again there was no resource with which to identify these organizations. There are also agreements between state natural resource agencies and the private sector (e.g. timber industry) which makes certain lands available for wildlife management techniques and various recreation activities. Unfortunately, there are no official maps from which ownership boundaries for the two previously mentioned groups might be extracted. The four management status categories can generally be defined as follows (after Scott et al. 1993, Edwards et al. 1995, Crist et al. 1995): · Status 1: An area having permanent protection from conversion of natural landcover and a mandated management plan in operation to maintain a natural state within which disturbance events (of natural type, frequency, and intensity) are allowed to proceed without interference or are mimicked through management. · Status 2: An area having permanent protection from conversion of natural landcover and a mandated management plan in operation to maintain a primarily natural state, but which may receive use or management practices that degrade the quality of existing natural communities. · Status 3: An area having permanent protection from conversion of natural landcover for the majority of the area, but subject to extractive uses of either a broad, low-intensity type or localized intense type. It also confers protection to federally listed endangered and threatened species throughout the area. · Status 4: Lack of irrevocable easement or mandate to prevent conversion of natural habitat types to anthropogenic habitat types and allow for intensive use throughout the tract, or existence of such restrictions is unknown. 4.2. Methods 4.2.1. Public Land Ownership Mapping Ownership category coding was approached slightly differently than had been done previously by other states. Rather than developing a multi-level coding system for layered land management status (e.g. wilderness area within a national forest) a separate code was developed. The national GAP handbook provided the core of codes already used and any additional codes generated by AR-GAP were added to the existing list. LAND OWNERSHIP CATEGORIES 1 US Forest Service - National Forest 5 Private ownership 6 Military Reservations - Military bases 7 US National Park Service - National Parks, Monuments, Historical Sites



	8 Arkansas Department of Parks Tourism - State Parks 9 Arkansas Game Fish Commission - Wildlife Management Areas 11 US Fish Wildlife - National Wildlife Refuge System 12 US Forest Service - Wilderness Areas 39 Water 49 The Nature Conservancy - Natural Areas 50 US Army Corps of Engineers 51 Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission - Natural Areas 52 Arkansas Forestry Commission - Arkansas State Forest 53 University of Arkansas System - School Forest 71 US Park Service - Wilderness Areas In spring of 1993 mapping of land ownership began in earnest, each agency was visited with specific request of digital data sets or other map products discovered during the initial inventory. At every state-wide AR-GAP meetings progress reports on the current mapping status of land ownership was presented, AR-GAP reply forms were available for individuals or agencies who might have additional data sets or ownership boundary maps. Several occasions of unclear ownership occurred, especially at the state level, where one agency had the deed but had allowed a long term lease to another agency (e.g. Arkansas Parks and Tourism entered into several such arrangements with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission). The first inkling of this occurred when maps from different state agencies arrived for the same area. In all cases the affected agencies were asked to clarify the issue and ownership maps were categorized accordingly. Each digital map set had to be examined for map projection and geographic coordinate information, once this information was known then the data sets were re-projected into one common projection, upon completion of the project all data sets were transformed into Lambert Conformal Projection. Paper maps posed additional problems due to map scale and the date of the map, many man hours went into conversions of these paper maps into digital data sets. As an incentive to provide maps each agency would receive a copy of the digital data set in their own map projection and coordinate system. Maps of each agencies ownership boundaries were sent to the respective agency for accuracy and completeness assessment. In some cases this was different than the source that submitted the original data set (e.g. Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission lands were derived from data sets that came from the Louisiana office of The Nature Conservancy) and any errors detected were corrected. 4.2.2. Management Status Initial labeling of management status was done in-house with the knowledge that a more refined second labeling effort would be needed later. As example all state parks were initially labeled as category 2 but in some cases areas were relabeled to either category 1 or 3 following the accuracy assessment phase, this was the case with almost every state agency. There were occasions when it was known that an area was being managed differently than surrounding lands but there were no working maps from which to delineate this area, in those cases



	with guidance from the effected agency the area in question was lumped into the status of the larger area. Almost always a conservative approach was taken, again in all cases we relied on the effected agency to determine the management status as defined by the national GAP Handbook. 4.3. Results Table 4.1. Area of Public Lands in Arkansas. Table 4.2. Area by Management Status. · Status 1: An area having an active management plan in operation to maintain a natural state and within which natural disturbance events are allowed to proceed without interference. Examples include Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission lands, Nature Conservancy preserves, and federal wilderness areas. · Status 2: An area generally managed for natural values, but which may receive use that degrades the quality of existing natural communities. Examples include US Fish Wildlife Service refuge areas, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission wildlife management areas, and most state parks. · Status 3: An area where legal mandates prevent the permanent conversion of natural



	habitat types to anthropogenic habitat types which are potentially subject to extractive uses. This includes most non-designated public lands. Examples include most national forest lands, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lands. · Status 4: Private or public lands without an existing easement or irrevocable management agreement to maintain native species and natural communities and which are managed for intense human use. Also included are areas for which the management status is unknown. Federal lands within Arkansas are: Ouachita, Ozark and St. Francis National Forests, Buffalo National River, Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas Post National Monument, Fort Smith National Historical Site, White River National Wildlife Refuge, Felesenthal National Wildlife Refuge, Overflow National Wildlife Refuge, Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge, Big Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Wapanocca National Wildlife Refuge, Cache River National Wildlife Refuge (under development and may have a name change), Fort Chaffee, Pine Bluff Arsenal, Camp Joseph T.Robinson, Little Rock Air Force Base, Blytheville Air Force Base, and various U. S. Army Corps of Engineers land which was contained in other data sets (e.g., some COE lands around corp lakes were included in the national forest data sets). State lands within Arkansas are: University of Arkansas - Fayetteville school forest, University of Arkansas - Monticello school forest, Arkansas State Parks, Arkansas Game & Fish Commission Wildlife Management Areas, Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission Natural Areas, and Arkansas Forestry Commission. 4.4. Limitations and Discussion These data sets represent a snap shot in time (fall 1995) and will need periodic revision to accurately reflect the public lands in Arkansas. Forest land mitigation between U. S. Forest Service and Weyerhauser Co. and the creation of a new US Fish & Wildlife wildlife refuge, through land mitigation, along the Cache River are examples of two such dynamic land exchanges. In some cases there are known areas that might enjoy a higher management status due to the fact that another entity, with more conservative minded goals, might actually control stewardship of the lands, but, there are no official maps delineating these areas. In the case of the U.S. Army COE, efforts are underway to map all lands controlled by the COE in Arkansas for populating their Geographic Information System data sets. At some date in the future this information will become available. Due to the complex nature of ownership vs. managing entity it was decided to have the land owners review the four management status and select the one that best depicts their own stewardship. Almost exclusively, the land owners selection of management status closely mirrored the in-house unofficial selection made by AR-GAP team members. Many groups within Arkansas are interested in continuation or periodic maintenance of the AR-GAP land ownership map. Because of statewide interest generated by the many public meeting held about the AR-GAP project in Arkansas information about private lands is more readily available today. Some of these lands might fall under one of the first three categories of the Management Status.