Lakes 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 the availability of lake habitat within the Midwest Landscape. It prioritizes areas based on locations of lakes and reservoirs greater than one hectare. This indicator originates from the LAGOS-US dataset. To create this layer, MLI partners, members, and staff completed the following mapping steps: projected all input data to NAD83 (2011) UTM Zone 15N, converted the lake polygons into a 30m raster, reclassified the lake raster into a binary with the following values: NoData– Not a lake, 1 – Lakes, and removed highly altered areas using our Highly Altered Areas mask. For full mapping details, please refer to the Midwest Conservation Blueprint 2023 Development Process document.
