Description: Joint Ventures (JVs) are bird conservation partnerships, established to achieve the goals of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP). There are 22 bird habitat JVs in North America, and our JV, the Upper Mississippi/Great Lakes Region Joint Venture (UMGL JV) is located in the Midwest, in a pivotal location in the Mississippi Flyway, for people involved in migratory bird conservation. We are a collaborative, regional group of government agencies, tribes, nonprofit organizations, corporations, universities, and individuals that conserve habitat for the benefit of migratory birds, other wildlife, and people. Our landscape includes eastern Minnesota; all of Wisconsin and Michigan; eastern Nebraska and Kansas; western, southern and eastern Iowa; northern Missouri, Illinois and Indiana; and northwestern Ohio.Targeting conservation to achieve biological objectives for Waterbirds and social objectives for People is a priority for JVs. We produced a Decision Support Tool (DST) for our JV region to help achieve this goal, and this dataset represents the raster of the mixed-model of the DST. The raster map was published in the JV Waterbird Habitat Conservation Strategy – 2018 Revision (Figure 13).Starting with a matrix of six relevant objectives, we transformed related biological and social data into a family of six spatially explicit model-based maps designed to achieve individual objectives. Output maps were weighted based on discussion with regional decision makers (JV Management board) and then combined, resulting in an aggregate mixed-model of the DST (this raster) to target conservation for Waterbirds and People in the JV region (mixing biological and social objectives).This raster showed the distribution and relative density (scale of 0 – 1; values of low – high) of the most valuable areas (pixel neighborhoods) across the JV region, to acquire or manage whatever the required action at the local scale is (i.e., retention, protection, and or restoration). Aggregate-priority-areas, emphasized mostly across Bird Conservation Region (BCR) 22 and 23, were predicted to produce the most value for the decision makers. These hotspots were mainly prioritized using relative density of breeding and or non-breeding habitats for waterbirds. They were then ‘customized’ by gaining low – high values depending on the relative density of current and potential social demand. Additional customization was achieved by adding relative density of development and agricultural, as a proxy for social need to restore ecological goods and services and Waterbirds need to decrease habitat threats. Areas other than the hotspots represents the availability of objective-targeting-areas in lower data densities, lower objective overlap, and/or lower objective weights.We designed a flexible and adaptable analysis framework, so objectives and objective weights can be easily adjusted to address shifts in regional stakeholder priorities and produced other models of this DST using different objective weights to compare outcomes with varied emphasis on biological vs. social values. All models of our DST (including this one) can be scaled-down (i.e., stepped-down to state, watershed, county, or any smaller target area) and supplemented with additional local data such as soil types, current land use, hydrologic aspects, and other environmental priorities for customized output maps depicting best areas for Waterbird habitat restoration vs. retention vs. enhancement. See the JV website and publications for details.Links:To download the raster dataset of this product (zipped geodatabase) and associated metadata and documentation, please browse the UMGL JV online folder in the U.S. Geological Survey's ScienceBase repository.To view the Web Map and Tile Layer of this product, please visit the product webpage in ArcGIS Online.To explore the Web Map of this product, please visit the online experience of the UMGL JV Decision Support Tools by ArcGIS Experience Builder.References:For internal use of USFWS staff, please reference Data Management Plan ID 684 with project title “UMGL JV Waterbirds & People Decision Support Tool (Mixed-Model)”.For internal use of UMGLJV staff, please reference original model code “AgsJvwWbDstV31_030_030__010_010_010_010_WeightedSum_MxdMdl_022218_Hlshd1StD25____Final”
Copyright Text: The GIS product available here summarizes the collective effort in the UMGL JV since 2017, and the credit goes to everyone in our partnership, including our science team, management board, and JV staff. Leading the design of spatial models, executing GIS analyses, creating the online contents, and sharing final products has been accomplished by JV's bird conservation modeler:
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, DOI Region 3, Migratory Birds Program, Upper Mississippi/Great Lakes Joint Venture, Mohammed A. Al-Saffar.