Spatial Designation of Critical Habitats for Endangered and Threatened Species in the United States

Establishing biological reserves or "hot spots" for endangered and threatened species is critical to support real-world species regulatory and management problems. Geographic data on the distribution of endangered and threatened species can be used to improve ongoing efforts for species conservation in the United States. At present no spatial database exists which maps out the location of endangered species for the US. However, spatial descriptions do exist for the habitat associated with all endangered species, but in a form not readily suitable to use in a geographic information system (GIS). In our study, the principal challenge was extracting spatial data describing these critical habitats for 472 species from over 1000 pages of the Federal Register. In addition, an appropriate database schema was designed to accommodate the different tiers of information associated with the species along with the confidence of designation; the interpreted location data was geo-referenced to the county enumeration unit producing a spatial database of endangered species for the whole of US. The significance of these critical habitat designations, database scheme and methodologies will be discussed.