Florida Natural Areas Inventory is working with partners to develop a comprehensive map of documented longleaf pine occurrences and ecological conditions across the range. This work is represented by two complementary projects:

• Florida Longleaf Pine Ecosystem Geodatabase (FLPEGDB), in partnership with the Florida Forever Service
• Southeast Longleaf Ecosystem Occurrences Geodatabase (LEO GDB), in partnership with USDA-NRCS, U. S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, the Longleaf Alliance, and America's Longleaf Restoration Initiative.
• Longleaf Pine Sustainability Analysis (LSA), in partnership with the University of Florida-Center for Landscape Conservation Planning (UF-CLCP) with funding from USDA-NRCS through The Longleaf Alliance and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities.

Longleaf pine ecosystems are among the most diverse in North America, supporting a large array of herbs and grasses as well as rare animal species such as red-cockaded woodpeckers and gopher tortoises. Although longleaf forests and savannas once dominated the southeastern coastal plain, they have been drastically reduced from an estimated 90 million acres to less than 3 million, largely due to urbanization, over-utilization, conversion to other land uses, and exclusion of natural fire regimes.

Much of the remaining acreage exists as fragmented stands in varying degrees of isolation. Recently, however, many organizations and agencies have taken steps to prevent further loss, improve what's left, and restore the longleaf pine ecosystem where practicable.

The LPEGDB and LEO GDB contribute to this effort by providing detailed, baseline data on the location and current ecological condition of remaining longleaf sites in Florida and across the range of longleaf pine.