TBCMP Habitats
Overview
This document describes the methods used to create updated spatial layers for the Tampa Bay Coastal Master Plan (TBCMP) habitat opportunity analysis. Layers are created for seven counties in the Tampa Bay region: Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, and Sarasota.
Methods are reproduced from the Tampa Bay Estuary Program 2020 Habitat Master Plan update described in Environmental Science Associates (2020) and Beck et al. (2023). All processing is implemented in numbered R scripts, described sequentially in the Steps sections. All source code is available at https://github.com/tbep-tech/tbcmp-habitat. Original code for the Habitat Master Plan is available at https://github.com/tbep-tech/hmpu-workflow. Claude Code was used extensively to adapt the original code herein, with all resulting products and documentation verified by a real human.
The methods herein differ from those in the original tbcmp-opportunities repository in two significant ways. First, the reservation space within the five-foot contour is removed and combined with the other four core opportunity categories. Second, output from the HEM analyses (tbcmp-analyze) that identify habitats most vulnerable to sea level rise are combined with these new opportunity layers.
Opportunity areas for each county can be downloaded here and are defined as follows:
| Category | Description |
|---|---|
| Existing Conservation Native | Native habitat within existing conservation lands, not in a vulnerability hot spot |
| Existing Conservation Native, vulnerable | Native habitat within existing conservation lands, within a vulnerability hot spot |
| Existing Conservation Restorable | Restorable land within existing conservation lands, not in a vulnerability hot spot |
| Existing Conservation Restorable, vulnerable | Restorable land within existing conservation lands, within a vulnerability hot spot |
| Proposed Conservation Native | Native habitat within proposed conservation lands, not in a vulnerability hot spot |
| Proposed Conservation Native, vulnerable | Native habitat within proposed conservation lands, within a vulnerability hot spot |
| Proposed Conservation Restorable | Restorable land within proposed conservation lands, not in a vulnerability hot spot |
| Proposed Conservation Restorable, vulnerable | Restorable land within proposed conservation lands, within a vulnerability hot spot |
A proposed weighting scheme for the each of these eight layers for informing priority areas within the broader Tampa Bay Coastal Master Plan is as follows. This weighting prioritizes vulnerable > non-vulnerable (mean weighting, 0.85, 0.45, respectively), proposed > existing (mean weighting 0.75, 0.55, respectively), and native > restorable (mean weighting 0.7, 0.6, respectively), nested in that order. In other words, native habitats that are at greatest risk of loss from sea level rise and that are not currently protected are given the highest priority.
| Category | Weight |
|---|---|
| Existing Conservation Native | 0.4 |
| Existing Conservation Native, vulnerable | 0.8 |
| Existing Conservation Restorable | 0.3 |
| Existing Conservation Restorable, vulnerable | 0.7 |
| Proposed Conservation Native | 0.6 |
| Proposed Conservation Native, vulnerable | 1.0 |
| Proposed Conservation Restorable | 0.5 |
| Proposed Conservation Restorable, vulnerable | 0.9 |