Flood Resilience
When water has somewhere to go. Wetlands, connected water systems, recharge areas, and landscapes capable of storing and moving water contribute to higher flood resilience.
Case Study 2: Avon Park Air Force Range Sentinel Landscape
This case study applies the Resilience Scorecard framework across the Avon Park Air Force Range Sentinel Landscape and the surrounding five-county Central Florida Regional Planning Council (CFRPC) service area in Florida's Heartland. The assessment evaluates resilience to wildfire, flooding, and extreme weather by integrating natural infrastructure, landscape condition, hydrologic function, and hazard exposure into a parcel-scale decision-support framework.
Results highlight where wetlands, lakes, recharge systems, fire-adapted ecosystems, and other natural landscape features contribute to long-term resilience, while also identifying locations where development pressure, infrastructure sensitivity, or environmental vulnerability may increase risk. The framework supports collaborative decision-making among military installations, conservation organizations, local governments, landowners, and regional planning partners.
The Landscape at a Glance
A Landscape Built on Balance
Central Florida is a landscape of contrasts.
Water is abundant, but where and how it moves matters. Fire is a recurring disturbance, but many ecosystems depend on it. Severe weather is unavoidable, yet wetlands, forests, working lands, and other natural systems can lessen its impacts.
That balance matters well beyond ecological health. The Avon Park Air Force Range Sentinel Landscape encompasses one of the most ecologically significant and operationally important regions in Central Florida, supporting military readiness alongside agriculture, wildlife habitat, water resources, rural communities, and significant natural landscapes.
Unlike landscapes where resilience may be dominated by a single hazard, resilience here emerges from the interaction of fire, water, weather, and land management.
Here, resilience is not the absence of disturbance. It is the ability of natural and working lands to experience disturbance and continue supporting military readiness, ecosystem function, and community stability.
Water
When Water Has Somewhere to Go
Water is one of the clearest expressions of resilience across the landscape.
Large wetland systems, connected lakes, groundwater recharge areas, and other hydrologically connected landscapes frequently exhibited higher resilience. These systems provide space for water to move, spread, infiltrate, and be stored rather than immediately becoming runoff.
During periods of heavy precipitation, that capacity matters. Wetlands store floodwater, connected hydrologic systems can reduce runoff, and recharge landscapes help maintain groundwater function and moderate flood impacts.
Explore Flood ResilienceFire
Living With Fire
Fire tells a different story.
Many of Central Florida's ecosystems did not develop in the absence of fire. They developed with it. Regular burning helps maintain ecological communities, influence vegetation structure, and limit the accumulation of hazardous fuels.
Across the assessment, many large natural landscapes and managed conservation lands demonstrated strong resilience across multiple hazards. Fire-adapted ecosystems and actively managed landscapes often exhibited higher wildfire resilience, reflecting the important role of prescribed fire, fuel management, and long-term ecological stewardship throughout Central Florida.
The wildfire map therefore captures more than where fire may occur. It helps show where landscape condition and management history have created a greater capacity to live with fire.
Explore Wildfire ResilienceWeather
Built to Weather the Storm
Central Florida also lives with recurring extreme weather.
Hurricanes, tropical systems, intense rainfall, wind, and other severe weather events can affect infrastructure, communities, agriculture, and natural systems across large areas at once. But the consequences of those events are not distributed evenly.
Landscape condition matters.
Connected natural lands, wetlands, vegetation, soils, and other forms of natural infrastructure can help absorb rainfall, maintain ecological function, and support recovery after disturbance. In other places, infrastructure sensitivity, altered hydrology, impervious surfaces, and repeated storm exposure can compound vulnerability.
Explore Extreme Weather ResilienceWhere Pressures Collide
Resilience changes when pressures overlap.
Some of the most important patterns appear not where a single hazard is strongest, but where development pressure, infrastructure sensitivity, altered hydrology, impervious surfaces, environmental vulnerability, or repeated storm exposure come together.
Those differences can occur over surprisingly short distances. Adjacent parcels sometimes received substantially different resilience scores because of differences in hydrologic connectivity, land cover, soil characteristics, proximity to infrastructure, and management history.
That is why the parcel scale matters. The maps move the conversation from broad regional vulnerability to a much more practical question:
Where could an action on the ground actually make a difference?
Stewardship
Stewardship Changes the Map
One of the strongest lessons from the Avon Park Air Force Range Sentinel Landscape is that resilience is not entirely fixed.
Management matters.
The Resilience Scorecard is not simply identifying resilient and vulnerable places. It is showing where existing stewardship is already supporting landscape function and where future conservation, restoration, or management could strengthen it.
Prescribed fire
Maintains fire-adapted ecosystems and reduces hazardous fuel accumulation.
Wetland protection
Preserves flood-storage capacity and hydrologic function.
Recharge protection
Supports groundwater systems and long-term water function.
Connected working lands
Maintain open space, connectivity, and ecological processes.
From Resilience to Readiness
Each parcel received a resilience score from 1 to 5 for wildfire, flooding, and extreme weather. Hazard-level scores were then integrated into a composite resilience framework designed to identify areas that consistently perform well across multiple dimensions.
Comparing those scores also reveals that resilience is not one condition. A parcel may be well equipped to withstand one type of disturbance while remaining vulnerable to another.
Viewed together, the maps help partners identify:
- Existing resilience anchors that support long-term landscape function
- Areas where restoration or conservation investments may improve resilience
- Locations where vulnerabilities may warrant additional planning or management attention
- Natural infrastructure investments that may provide benefits across multiple hazards
- Opportunities to align resilience investments with military readiness and conservation objectives
Putting the Scorecard to Work
The parcel-scale results can support planning and decision-making well beyond the assessment itself. Potential applications include integration with the Central Florida Regional Planning Council's Regional Resiliency Toolkit for Inland Governments, regional resilience planning, conservation prioritization, military readiness and mission support, funding and grant applications, natural infrastructure investments, and partner coordination.
Technical details:
The parcel-scale framework adapts the DoD Extreme Conditions Assessment Tool concept to Sentinel Landscape planning. Geospatial indicators associated with each hazard were summarized to parcels using zonal statistics and converted to standardized 1–5 resilience scores. Hazard-level scores were then integrated into a weighted composite framework, with outputs available in GIS-ready and tabular formats.
Explore the Results
Three Hazards. One Landscape.
Resilience does not look the same everywhere, or for every disturbance. Compare the maps to see how water, fire, landscape condition, management, hazard exposure, and the built environment shape resilience differently across Central Florida.
Wildfire Resilience
Living with fire. Fire-adapted ecosystems and actively managed landscapes show how ecological condition, prescribed fire, fuel management, and long-term stewardship influence resilience.
Extreme Weather Resilience
Built to weather the storm. Natural infrastructure and landscape condition influence how well different parts of the region absorb and recover from severe weather and repeated storm impacts.
Planning for What Comes Next
The Avon Park Air Force Range Sentinel Landscape assessment demonstrates that many of the landscape features supporting military readiness, agricultural lands, and ecological integrity are the same features that strengthen long-term resilience.
Wetlands are storing water. Recharge areas are supporting groundwater systems. Fire-managed landscapes are maintaining ecological function. Working and natural lands are keeping large portions of the landscape connected.
These systems provide measurable benefits across multiple hazards. By translating those benefits into parcel-scale scores, the Resilience Scorecard makes resilience visible, measurable, and actionable.
For military installations, conservation organizations, local governments, landowners, and regional partners, that creates an opportunity to look beyond individual hazards and coordinate strategic conservation, resilience investments, natural infrastructure, and long-term landscape stewardship.
The result is more than a set of maps. It is a decision-support framework that strengthens the connection between military readiness, ecosystem function, and community resilience throughout Central Florida.
Resilience here is not about eliminating fire, floods, or extreme weather.
It is about maintaining a landscape capable of living with them.
Downloads and supporting files are available in the panel to the right.
