Potential rivercane restoration management areas (SECAS draft 2 indicator)

Reason for Selection This indicator prioritizes places for river cane restoration near lands of federally recognized Tribes within the Southeast region. River cane (Arundinaria gigantea), is a bamboo native to the Southeast United States and historically formed large stands called canebrakes that could stretch for miles within the floodplain and riparian areas. While river cane is not a rare species, dense and intact patches of river cane habitat have declined to less than 2% of their historical extent (cite). River cane is an ecologically significant habitat for many native species including wood thrush, Swainson’s warbler, and pollinators. Often mistaken for invasive Asian bamboo, river cane is also considered a cultural keystone species for many Tribes and indigenous communities. Cultural keystone species represent species whose existence have significantly contributed to the cultural identity of a people (Garibaldi et al. 2004). For centuries, and possibly thousands of years, indigenous people used river cane extensively for a myriad of purposes including baskets, building materials, weaponry, religious practices, and more (Griffith 2025). Because of the decline of intact healthy canebrakes, lifeways and traditions that include or rely on rivercane have also declined. Canebrakes also serve as a critical habitat for a variety of fauna including threatened and endangered species, offer refugia to many animals, and support erosion control and a flood barrier along streams where frequent flooding may be an issue. River cane’s root structure helps maintain stability for streambanks while also efficiently taking up excess nutrients from runoff, protecting the water quality of freshwater habitats (cite). This indicator reflects the potential for relationships between Indigenous nations and land holders, particularly public lands, to build co-management practices that prioritize healthy rivercane ecosystems. This indicator also promotes consistency with the Tribal Trust responsibilities held by the federal government to Tribal nations to protect Indigenous resources and lands as well as the preservation goals of many Indigenous governments in the Southeast whose cultural survival and land health rely heavily on river cane ecosystems. Input Data * EPA floodplains * GSSURGO 30 meter soils data CONUS (accessed March 2025) * Flood Inundation * [TIGER/Line Shapefile, 2021, Nation, U.S., American Indian/Alaska Native/Native Hawaiian (AIANNH) Areas] * [EPA US Level IV Ecoregions (without state boundaries) ] * Conus 2021 C-Cap landcover (accessed April 2025) * [Stable Coastal Wetlands Indicator] from the 2024 Southeast Blueprint * SE Blueprint 2024 Continental Extent * Gbif rivercane observations * Current 1/3 arc-second DEM downloaded from the national map using uGet [https://apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/] (accessed November 2024) * Current 1 arc-second DEM downloaded from the national map using uGet [https://apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/] (accessed November 2024) Mapping Steps * Identify potential restoration or management areas by creating an enhanced floodplain layer (EPA floodplains plus frequently flooded soil areas) and then removing areas that are too frequently flooded. * * Clip soils data to the 2024 SE Blueprint continental extent the extract by mask function * Join the muaggatt table to the soils data using the add join function * Make a copy of the raster to preserve the join * Reclassify the raster using the flood frequency dominate condition field, giving values of Very frequent, Frequent, or Occasional a value of 1, and giving values of Very rare, Rare, or None a value of 0 * Reclassify the raster using the flood frequency maximum field, giving values of Very frequent, Frequent, or Occasional a value of 1, and giving values of Very rare, Rare, or None a value of 0 * Combine the two soils flood frequency rasters with the EPA floodplain raster using the cell statistics function with the statistics type of maximum. This enhances the EPA floodplain layer by adding additional potentially flooded areas * Reproject the inundation data and convert it to 30 meters using the project raster function and a bilinear resampling type * Pull out pixels from the resampled inundation layer that are greater than 10 using the spatial analyst conditional function. This is a threshold we are testing to pull out areas from the enhanced floodplain layer that may be too wet for rivercane. In the output raster, give pixels with a value greater than 10 a value of 0 and all other pixels a value of 1 * Remove frequently inundated pixels from the enhanced floodplain layer using the spatial analyst times function * Limit potential restoration or management areas to a rough estimate of the historic rivercane range * * Make a copy of the EPA ecoregions layer * I reused some code here from the SE Blueprint subregions. It was fast to run, but is convoluted for these purposes. I’m going to rewrite it to simplify it * But basically we selecting level III ecoregion that have rivercane observations in the Gbif database. We also added in a few level IV ecoregions to capture additional areas on the western side of the extent. This removes areas from our SE Blueprint geography on the western side and in peninsular Florida * Remove potential or management areas that fall outside the rough extent using the spatial analyst extract by mask function * Remove coastal wetlands from potential restoration or management areas * * Make a copy of the C-CAP raster * Remove some coastal areas using the spatial analyst conditional function, giving the C-CAP estuarine wetland classes (16,17,18), barren land (20), and unconsolidated shore (21) pixels a value of 0, and all other pixels the value from the potential restoration or management areas created above * Reclassify the stable coastal wetland indicator, giving NODATA or 0 pixels a value of 1 and 1 or 2 pixels a value of 0 * Take reclassified stable coastal wetland indicator times the potential restoration or management areas created above, to further refine it * Calculate a buffer around tribal lands, which will be used to rank potential restoration or management areas * Make a copy of the tribal lands layer * Remove tribal lands that are not federally recognized using the select function to pull out polygons with at AIANNHR value of F * Remove some additional tribal lands that are in peninsular Florida. Discussions with Seminole GIS data managers indicated that rivercane is not a cultural priority, we need to double check with specific tribal nations to verify, but since the following areas are outside or on the edge of the historic rivercane extent, we are removing them from this analysis: Names IN ('Big Cypress', 'Brighton', 'Coconut Creek', 'Fort Pierce', 'Hollywood', 'Immokalee', 'Miccosukee', 'Seminole (FL)', 'Tampa')") * Buffer the remaining federally recognized tribal lands by 30 miles * Add a field to be used to convert to raster, then convert to raster and reclassify to assign a value of 100 to tribal lands and a buffer of 30 miles from tribal lands * Identify protected areas, which will be used to rank potential restoration or management areas * * prepare the protected areas data, starting with the PAD-US 4.0 combined proclamation, marine, fee, designation, and easement layer. * To exclude areas that do not meet the intent of this indicator, remove areas with location designations of ‘School Trust Land’, ‘School Lands’, ‘School Land’, ‘State Land Board’, or ‘3201’. These extensive lands are leased out and are not open to the public. * Remove areas with the designation type of 'Military' or “Proclamation'. Military lands are not primarily managed for conservation. The proclamation category represents the approved boundary of public lands, within which land protection is authorized to occur, but not all lands within the proclamation boundary are necessarily currently in a conserved status. * Remove areas with the owner name of 'BOEM'. These Outer Continental Shelf lease blocks do not represent actively protected marine parks, but serve as the “legal definition for BOEM offshore boundary coordinates...for leasing and administrative purposes” (BOEM). * Remove areas with a category of 'Proclamation' (see explanation above). * PAD-US 4.0 is missing state wildlife management area boundaries in Oklahoma. Extract those from PAD-US 3.0 by using a combination of a state name of 'Oklahoma' and local designation of 'State Wildlife Management Area'. * Merge the selected polygons from PAD-US 4.0 and PAD-US 3.0, then convert to raster and reclassify to assign a value of 10 to protected areas * Rank potential rivercane restoration or management areas based on proximity to tribal lands and protected status * * Combine the following rasters using cell statistics maximum: potential restorable rivercane areas, tribal lands with a 30 mile buffer, and protected lands * Reclassify the above raster to assign ranks based on proximity to tribal lands and protected status, as seen in the final legend values below * As a final step, clip to the rough estimate of the historic rivercane extent. Final indicator values Indicator values are assigned as follows: 4 = potential rivercane restoration or management area on protected land that is within 30 miles of Tribal lands 3 = potential rivercane restoration or management area within 30mi of Tribal lands 2 = potential rivercane restoration or management area on protected land 1 = potential rivercane restoration or management area 0 = not identified as a rivercane restoration or management area