Illinois NWL+ | iESPSS
This site is part of the Illinois Ecosystem Services Planning Support System (iESPSS), developed by the LEAM Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to support conservation and climate policy planning across Illinois.
The research
The LEAM Lab is leading the development of Illinois' first comprehensive Natural and Working Lands (NWL+) Plan — a statewide assessment of carbon sequestration potential, greenhouse gas emissions, conservation opportunity, and ecosystem service delivery across forests, wetlands, grasslands, croplands, and urban green space.
The interactive maps and scenarios on this site present the geospatial layer of that research: where these lands are, what they contribute, and how different conservation trajectories would change those outcomes across the state.
The data
- Land cover: 30-meter resolution raster data from the USGS National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2019/2021), with supplemental vector layers from field surveys
- Historic baseline: Illinois Natural History Survey compilation of Public Land Survey System records (1800s), published 2003
- Carbon sequestration: Per-acre values from peer-reviewed literature (Zhu and Reed 2014, USGS) applied to land cover classes
- Ecosystem services: Integrated multi-metric framework combining carbon, GHG accounting, and ecosystem service valuation layers
Contact
611 Taft Dr, Champaign, IL 61820
Part of iESPSS
This interactive mapping platform is Phase 2 of the Illinois Ecosystem Services Planning Support System — complementing the statewide scenario analysis and policy exploration tools developed in Phase 1.
Original iESPSS tool