Description: A spatial representation of potential natural areas. The polygons contained in this feature class were derived from data developed for the 2004 Oakland County Natural Areas Report update. Each feature was assigned a priority of One, Two, or Three. Digital Landcover, orthophotography, and USGS quadrangle maps were the main sources used to identify each natural area. The data from the Oakland County Natural Areas update project was collected in 2004. Key attributes include Priority and TotalScore. "Priority" is a reflection of quality and indicates the level of priority to retain or conserve the natural state of the identified area.
Description: The RegionalPresettlementVegetation is land use circa 1800. It is a statewide database for Michigan based on original surveyors tree data and descriptions of the vegetation and land between 1816 and 1856. This polygon feature class was adjusted from a shapefile downloaded in 2000, from the State of Michigan's Online Geographic Data Library (http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/mgdl/). The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is the publisher of the data. The feature class was reprojected and then clipped to Oakland County's extent. Some attributes were removed from the data. The original data was published in 1978 by the State of Michigan. The scale of the data collection is unknown. The key attributes include: COVERTYPE, LEGCODE and VEGCODE.
Description: The natural tree row polygon layer was developed in the summer of 2000 with on-screen digitizing in ArcView, using the 1997 Oakland County digital Orthophotography and the 1995 Land Use/Land Cover coverage provided by the Southeastern Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) as reference themes. Note: The southeast portion of the county (9 geographic townships) was excluded from this coverage. The key attribute associated with this coverage is "Acres".
Description: The downloaded SSURGO data included an ArcGIS Shapefile of the soil type features for Oakland County, tabular data in text file format, and an empty pre-formatted Microsoft Access database containing queries, macros and reports. The Shapefile was intially projected in State Plane Michigan South Meters NAD 83, but was then reprojected by Oakland County staff to State Plane Michigan South International Feet NAD 83. The USDA-NRCS provided instructions for automatically importing the tabular text files into the Microsoft Access database. The key attribute of this feature class is the map unit key (MUSYM field), which relates the polygon features to the SoilAttribute table stored within SDE. The related SoilAttribute table in SDE contains some of the tabular data which was initially imported into the aforementioned Microsoft Access database.
Description: This polygon feature class represents the spatial extent of surficial geology deposits, glacial and sub-glacial drainage, and historical glacial lake shoreline areas in Oakland County. These features were captured using a combination of a surface TIN derived from 10-foot contours and a detailed original map of Oakland County surficial geology by Twenter and Knutilla, 1972. Polygons were delineated on a hard-copy map by John Zawiskie, Cranbrook geologist. The map was then scanned and registered to Oakland County GIS data. The polygons were digitized on-screen. Data was collected at approximately 1:1200; however the original map was produced at a countywide scale. The key attribute is the geologic sediment type.
Description: A spatial representation of potential natural areas. The polygons contained in this feature class were derived from data developed for the 2004 Oakland County Natural Areas Report update. Each feature was assigned a priority of One, Two, or Three. Digital Landcover, orthophotography, and USGS quadrangle maps were the main sources used to identify each natural area. The data from the Oakland County Natural Areas update project was collected in 2004. Key attributes include Priority and TotalScore. "Priority" is a reflection of quality and indicates the level of priority to retain or conserve the natural state of the identified area.
Description: A spatial representation of specific patches of natural vegetation within larger intact landscapes that have the potential to harbor high quality natural communities and/or for harboring rare plants and animals. These patches represent places on the landscape that appear to have experienced the least amount of impact or degradation from human activities since the early 1800s.These potential natural areas (PNAs) represent patches of various natural land cover that also vary in size, quality, and landscape context. The natural land cover types within these PNAs also vary by type and quality. The objective is to identify specific patches of natural land cover (forest, wetland) within priority PNAs, that have a high likelihood of exhibiting ecological intactness and integrity.The polygons contained in this feature class were derived from data developed for the Oakland County Potential Natural Areas Assessment: 2017 Report. Oakland County's digital aerial photography from 1940, 1963, and 2015 along with the Oakland County NaturalArea2017 coverage were the primary data sources used to create this data. Key attributes include Habitat and Notes.The term "potential natural area" is not to be confused with the legal term "dedicated Natural Area" as described in Part 351, Wilderness and Natural Areas, of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act of 1994 which gives land special legal protection.The Oakland County Potential Natural Areas Assessment: 2017 Report prepared by: John Paskus, Associate Program Leader - Conservation Helen Enander, Information Technologist I Michigan Natural Features Inventory P.O. Box 13036, Lansing, MI 48901 (Report Number 2017-17) should be distributed with the HighQualityHabitat2017 data. This document provides essential information for the attributes and procedures used to create the features in the dataset.