Sensitive Lakeshore Assessment

The Sensitive Lakeshore Assessment Project was initiated to identify lakeshore areas of unique or critical habitat, or high biological diversity, in north-central Minnesota. An ecological model incorporating existing data (including wetlands and hydric soils) and field-collected data (including distribution and abundance of aquatic plants and high-priority animal species) was used to objectively rank lakeshores for sensitive area designation.<br/><br/><b>Highly sensitive shoreland</b> is a polygon feature class representing sensitive areas of lakeshore buffered landward by 1/4 mile. The <b>sensitivity index</b> is a point feature class representing the sum of scores of the data layers at equally-spaced points along the shoreline of a lake. See http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/eco/sli/index.html for more information on attributes and analysis.