Forests is an indicator of the Midwest Landscape Initiative’s (MLI) 2023 Midwest Conservation Blueprint. The Blueprint is a basemap of priority lands and waters for conservation across the Midwest consisting of over 20 social and environmental values representing diverse interests across society. This indicator was chosen as a targetable, important feature of the MLI goals that will be used to track conditions over time and prioritize areas for conservation. Indicators were defined through elicitation and prioritization exercises with federal and state participants. Criteria for the indicators includes 1) actionable, 2) measurable, 3) relevant to multiple groups across the region, and/or 4) representative of other social and/or environmental values. This indicator identifies forest condition regarding the availability and risk of mortality of forested stands within the Midwest Landscape. It prioritizes areas based on locations of forested stands and risks from major forest insects and diseases. This indicator originates from the U.S. Forest Service National Insect and Disease Risk Map and the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). To create this layer, MLI partners, members, and staff completed the following mapping steps: projected all input data to NAD83 (2011) UTM Zone 15N, resampled the Forest layer to a 30m raster, and reclassed the raster into the following 3 classes: 1 – Pixels at hazard for mortality losses exceeding 25% of their 2012 basal area over the 2013-2027 time frame, 2 – Pixels considered at risk in the NIDRM_2012 assessment, but that are likely no longer at risk, 3 – Treed areas, but not modeled as “At Risk”. Due to the low resolution of the Forest data, many pixels located in open water are incorrectly classified as treed stands. To correct the issue, pixels classified by NLCD as “open water” were removed from the Forest data. Finally, we removed highly altered areas from this layer using our Highly Altered Areas mask. For full mapping details, please refer to the Midwest Conservation Blueprint 2023 Development Process document.