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The Northeast United States and Atlantic Canada share many of the same types of forests, wetlands, and natural communities, and from a wildlife perspective the region is one contiguous forest. However, resources are classified and mapped differently on the two sides of the border, creating challenges for habitat evaluation, species modeling, and predicting the effects of climate change. To remedy this, ecologists from The Nature Conservancy collaborated with a committee of scientists from various Canadian institutions to produce the first international map of terrestrial habitats for northeast North America. The project used extensive spatial data on geology, soils, landforms, wetlands, elevation and climate. Additionally,...
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FRAGSTATS is a computer software program designed to compute a wide variety of landscape metrics for categorical map patterns.The original software (version 2) was released in the public domain during 1995 in association with the publication of a USDA Forest Service General Technical Report (McGarigal and Marks 1995). Since then, hundreds of professionals have enjoyed the use of FRAGSTATS. Due to its popularity, the program was completely revamped in 2002 (version 3). Recently, the program was upgraded to accommodate ArcGIS10 (version 3.4). The latest release (version 4) reflects a major revamping of the software, with a completely redesigned architecture intended to support the addition of cell-level metrics and...
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Abstract (from Springer Link): Conservation planning is increasingly using “coarse filters” based on the idea of conserving “nature’s stage”. One such approach is based on ecosystems and the concept of ecological integrity, although myriad ways exist to measure ecological integrity. To describe our ecosystem-based index of ecological integrity (IEI) and its derivative index of ecological impact (ecoImpact), and illustrate their applications for conservation assessment and planning in the northeastern United States. We characterized the biophysical setting of the landscape at the 30 m cell resolution using a parsimonious suite of settings variables. Based on these settings variables and mapped ecosystems, we computed...
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Add text about species models To learn more about each model and download the corresponding data please visit their pages: Landscape Capability, 2010 - multiple records...https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/565c92d2e4b071e7ea542ebd ? Climate Zones, 2080 - https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/5a8dab80e4b0699060594fcf Climate Response, 2080 - https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/5a8336dde4b00f54eb329752
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Abstract (from Science Direct): Urban development is a principal driver of landscape change affecting the integrity of ecological systems and the capacity of the landscape to support species. We developed an urban growth model (SPRAWL), evaluated it with hindcasting, and used it to simulate urban growth across the northeastern United States between 2010 and 2080 under four alternative scenarios. In the model, urban growth is constrained by demand for new development for each time step at the subregional scale. Demand is subsequently allocated to local application panes (5 km on a side within 15 km window) using a unique landscape context matching algorithm, such that the more historical development that occurred...
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