This layer was created as part of Esri’s Green Infrastructure Initiative and is one of five newly generated companion datasets that can be used for Green Infrastructure (GI) planning at national, regional, and more local scales. If used together, these layers should have corresponding date-based suffixes (YYYYMMDD). The corresponding layer names are: Intact Habitat Cores, Habitat Connectors, Habitat Fragments, Habitat Cost Surface, and Intact Habitat Cores by Betweeness. These Esri derived data, and additional data central to GI planning from other authoritative sources, are also available as Map Packages for each U.S. State and can be downloaded from the Green Infrastructure Data Gallery.

Habitat fragments are minimally disturbed natural areas that were not included in the Intact Habitat Cores layer because they did not meet the minimum requirements related to size, minimum thickness, and/or the centroid of a cell fell outside the inner habitat core edge buffer. They are typically smaller than 100 acres in size and/or less than 200 meters wide and often highlight narrow riparian corridors. 

Habitat fragments can comprise a large portion of the landscape’s surface in areas significantly fragmented by roads, railroads, agriculture and other human dominated activities. While smaller than a core, these areas may represent highly valuable local GI assets in that they may improve ecosystem functions of neighboring cores, serve as green infrastructure building blocks in highly fragmented landscapes void of cores,  provide stepping stones for facilitating local connectivity, and pose opportunities for habitat restoration among others.

Data Coordinate System: NAD_1983_Albers