Caribbean Low-Urban Historic Landscapes (Southeast Blueprint Indicator)

Reason for Selection Low-urban historic landscapes indicate significant cultural landscapes whose cultural context has been less impacted by urban development. Cultural landscapes are “properties [that] represent the combined works of nature and of man” (UNESCO 2012). Loss of natural habitat within these cultural landscapes reduces their overall historic and cultural value. Input Data * [Southeast Blueprint 2023 subregions]: Caribbean * [Southeast Blueprint 2023 extent] * 2020 [LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation Type] (EVT) (v2.2.0) for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands; [access the data for U.S. Insular Areas] * The following [The National Register of Historic Places] data for Puerto Rico provided by Eduardo Cancio, Information Systems Specialist with the Puerto Rico State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) on 2-21-2023 (contact [ecancio@prshpo.pr.gov] for more information): * NRHP_PR_individual_properties.shp * NRHP_PR_lineal_districts.shp * NRHP_PR_polygonal_districts.shp The National Register of Historic Places reflects what Americans value in their historic built environment. It is the collection of our human imprint on the landscape that records through time our changing relationship with the landscape, bridging between modern life and our history by providing, as closely as possible, experiences that evoke our empathy and understanding of previous eras. * [OpenStreetMap data ]“multipolygons” layer, accessed 3-14-2023 A polygon from this dataset is considered a historic site if the “historic” tag is not null. In OpenStreetMap, a historic feature refers to “features that still exist or of which traces are observable, and that are of historic interest, or where the feature class is generally of historical interest”. We only used historic polygons if the name tag is also not null. OpenStreetMap[®] is open data, licensed under the [Open Data Commons Open Database License] (ODbL) by the [OpenStreetMap Foundation] (OSMF). Additional credit to OSM contributors. Read more on [the OSM copyright page]. * Select USVI historic districts: Polygon boundaries for the Christiansted National Historic District on St. Thomas and Charlotte Amalie Historic and Architectural Historic District on St. Croix, provided by Nikita Beck with the University of the Virgin Islands on 3-6-2023 (contact [nikita.beck@uvi.edu] for more information) Mapping Steps * Identify urban areas using the following classes from 2020 LANDFIRE EVT: Developed-High Intensity, Developed-Low Intensity, Developed-Medium Intensity, Developed-Open Space, Developed-Roads. Classify all urban pixels as 1 and all other pixels as 0. * Calculate the percent urban in a 270 m radius circle for each pixel using the Focal Statistics tool in ArcGIS. Since the LANDFIRE data resolution is 30 m, 270 m (9 pixels) approximates a 250 m radius. Retain all pixels that are <50% urban within a 270 m radius. * Create a historic places layer by combining the following vector datasets as follows: * Buffer National Register point data from the Puerto Rico SHPO by 100 m. * Combine National Register polygons from the Puerto Rico SHPO, select USVI historic districts, and OpenStreetMap polygons. Only use OpenStreetMap polygons if both the historic and name columns are null. Buffer the polygons by 30 m. * Buffer line data from the Puerto Rico SHPO by 30 m. * Merge all buffered point, polygon, and line data into one layer and convert to a 30 m raster representing historic places. * Use the historic places raster to remove areas that fall outside of the historic places. * Reclassify the above raster into 3 classes, seen in the final indicator values below. * Clip to the Caribbean Blueprint 2023 subregion. * As a final step, clip to the spatial extent of Southeast Blueprint 2023. Note: For more details on the mapping steps, code used to create this layer is available [in the Southeast Blueprint 2025 Data Download] or [Caribbean-only Southeast Blueprint 2025 Data Download] under > 6_Code. Final indicator values Indicator values are assigned as follows: 2 = Historic place with nearby low-urban buffer 1 = Historic place with nearby high-urban buffer 0 = Not identified as a historic place Known Issues * There are likely spatial mapping errors for some of the historic areas. * Some historic areas with cultural importance are not captured in the National Register of Historic Places. * The approach to measuring urban development doesn’t capture degradation to historic places that were historically in larger cities (e.g., courthouses and other downtown buildings). It also doesn’t distinguish between historic places that have always been urban and historic places that used to be low-urban. * This layer likely underrepresents some historic areas in the U.S. Virgin Islands compared to Puerto Rico because we were unable to incorporate historic places data from the USVI SHPO during the timeline of this Blueprint update. As a result, some sites on the National Register of Historic Places are not depicted in this indicator. * OpenStreetMap is a crowdsourced dataset. While members of the OpenStreetMap community often verify map features to check for accuracy and completeness, there is the potential for spatial errors (e.g., misrepresenting the boundary of a historic site) or incorrect tags (e.g., labelling an area as a historic site that does not have historic value). However, using a crowdsourced dataset gives on-the-ground experts, Blueprint users, and community members the power to fix errors and add new historic sites to improve the accuracy and coverage of this indicator in the future. * Because open water is considered a non-urban landcover for the purposes of this analysis, this indicator is likely overprioritizing some urbanized historic areas that are close to water, such as marinas and bridges. Disclaimer: Comparing with Older Indicator Versions There are numerous problems with using Southeast Blueprint indicators for change analysis. Please consult Blueprint staff if you would like to do this (email [hilary_morris@fws.gov]). Literature Cited OpenStreetMap. Historic. Data extracted through Geofabrik downloads. Accessed March 14, 2023. [[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:historic]]. LANDFIRE, Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS), U.S. Geological Survey. Published August 1, 2022. LANDFIRE 2020 Existing Vegetation Type (EVT) Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands. LF 2020, raster digital data. Sioux Falls, SD. [[https://www.landfire.gov]]. UNESCO (2012) Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention [[1]]. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Paris. Page 14. [[https://whc.unesco.org/archive/opguide12-en.pdf]].