The NHI Portal and Community Planning

Why use the NHI Portal for community planning?

The NHI Portal is an online application that provides access to detailed locational data on NHI records. Access to the Portal is provided by a license agreement between the Department and the licensee holder. The Portal can be used for:

Biodiversity Information for Community planning:

• Endangered Species – NHI data includes occurrences of rare species across the state of Wisconsin. Some (endangered and threatened) are afforded protection under state law. (What is legal protection) Others are unprotected but have suspected problems with abundance or distribution. Protecting them now prevents future endangerment and promotes ecosystem management. What is the Biodiversity of your community? The following information is provided through the summary report of the Portal after an area or community is selected.
• Landscape-level considerations: Why is Biodiversity important? How do we factor it into planning? Starting at a broad scale, each community is part of an ecological landscape that determines the area’s climate, soils and landforms, which in turn determines the vegetation, habitat and species that are likely to be found in a particular area. Basins and waterbodies are important too and can provide an understanding of a community’s valuable aquatic resources.
• Natural Communities: natural communities are the assemblages of plants and animals at specific locations. They are examples of Wisconsin intact native communities and capture much of our native biodiversity.
• State Natural Areas: Officially designated natural areas protect many outstanding examples of the native landscape and often protect valuable resources. They can tell you a lot about the surrounding areas as well.

View an example of how the NHI Portal can be used for community planning

Site/Project Review:

The NHI Portal allows the user to select a specific geographic area and view the detailed data for occurrences of rare species at and around the site. The Portal includes tools for zooming in to a particular area, panning, and viewing the many available GIS layers.

• The Search Area: The Search Area Tool to delineates the project site. The Portal provides a Results Page that summarizes the NHI data and allows access to detailed site information.
• The One-mile Buffer to consider availability of suitable habitat. Since many lands throughout the State have not been thoroughly surveyed for rare species, a broader view of a site is helpful. Understanding what species or natural communities exist within a one-mile buffer ensures appropriate consideration of all potential species. If the project site supports habitat suitable for rare species that are documented as occurring in the surrounding landscape, then the site may also support these rare species.

Similarly, the NHI Portal provides a list of waterbodies within 2-miles of the project area and EO data for the entire reach of the waterbody.

• Landscape Context: Review other information that provides context to the landscape of your project. For example, the Portal provides information on the Ecological Landscape and Basin for your site, State natural areas within two miles, and links to NHI inventory reports that were conducted for the area. Each of these provides useful ecological information that provides a better understanding of potential occurrences of rare species and management opportunities.