The following schedule is from the 72nd Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies which was held October 21-24, 2018 in Mobile, Alabama.
AUTHORS: Jennifer Bock, Stephen Rockwood, Beacham Furse, Donald Fox, David Douglas – Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
ABSTRACT: Florida’s freshwater habitats provide many essential functions including flood control and nutrient sequestration. While serving as habitat for many fish and wildlife species, wetlands also contribute significantly to the outdoor recreation industry. Despite these services, aquatic habitats continue to face many threats, such as urban encroachment, water withdrawals, water level stabilization, sedimentation, non-native species introduction, cultural eutrophication, and climate change. With Florida’s increasing human population, encroachment and development continues into natural areas, stressing aquatic habitats and the fish and wildlife that depend on healthy wetlands. This paper summarizes a GIS process for identifying publicly accessible freshwater resources and presents an optimization analysis for prioritizing those resources to guide future management considerations. Publicly accessible lakes, streams and freshwater forested and non-forested wetlands were identified, mapped and quantified as a function of variables representing their socio-economic value, fish and wildlife value and management emphasis (i.e. the need and opportunity for habitat restoration). Results prioritized 1235 sub-watersheds containing streams, 1835 conservation areas containing forested and/or non-forested wetlands and 324 lakes = 20.2 hectares. This prioritization provides a quantitative, science-based decision framework for managers to more effectively allocate resources to those sites that will provide the greatest ecological benefits resulting from restoration, enhancement, and management activities.
