Land Surface Forms for the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative

Dates

Publication Date: 2008-11

Summary

The Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GPLCC, https://www.fws.gov/science/catalog) is a partnership that provides applied science and decision support tools to assist natural resource managers conserve plants, fish and wildlife in the mid- and short-grass prairie of the southern Great Plains. It is part of a national network of public-private partnerships — known as Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs, http://www.fws.gov/science/shc/lcc.html) — that work collaboratively across jurisdictions and political boundaries to leverage resources and share science capacity. The Great Plains LCC identifies science priorities for the region and helps foster science that addresses these priorities to support wildlife conservation [...]

Summary

The Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GPLCC, https://www.fws.gov/science/catalog) is a partnership that provides applied science and decision support tools to assist natural resource managers conserve plants, fish and wildlife in the mid- and short-grass prairie of the southern Great Plains. It is part of a national network of public-private partnerships — known as Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs, http://www.fws.gov/science/shc/lcc.html) — that work collaboratively across jurisdictions and political boundaries to leverage resources and share science capacity. The Great Plains LCC identifies science priorities for the region and helps foster science that addresses these priorities to support wildlife conservation throughout the Great Plains region. It also assists partners in building their own capacity to address scientific challenges associated with our rapidly changing environment. These data were compiled because the information did not previously exist as a single resource for the GPLCC area. They are intended to inform local and regional conservation and management strategies with a complete regional perspective. Abstract provided by original data sources: "A new map of standardized, mesoscale (tens to thousands of hectares) terrestrial ecosystems for the conterminous United States was developed by using a biophysical stratification approach. The ecosystems delineated in this top-down, deductive modeling effort are described in NatureServe’s classification of terrestrial ecological systems of the United States. The ecosystems were mapped as physically distinct areas and were associated with known distributions of vegetation assemblages by using a standardized methodology first developed for South America. This approach follows the geoecosystems concept of R.J. Huggett and the ecosystem geography approach of R.G. Bailey. Unique physical environments were delineated through a geospatial combination of national data layers for biogeography, bioclimate, surficial materials lithology, land surface forms, and topographic moisture potential. Combining these layers resulted in a comprehensive biophysical stratification of the conterminous United States, which produced 13,482 unique biophysical areas. These were considered as fundamental units of ecosystem structure and were aggregated into 419 potential terrestrial ecosystems. The ecosystems classification effort preceded the mapping effort and involved the independent development of diagnostic criteria, descriptions, and nomenclature for describing expert-derived ecological systems. The aggregation and labeling of the mapped ecosystem structure units into the ecological systems classification was accomplished in an iterative, expert-knowledge-based process using automated rulesets for identifying ecosystems on the basis of their biophysical and biogeographic attributes. The mapped ecosystems, at a 30-meter base resolution, represent an improvement in spatial and thematic (class) resolution over existing ecoregionalizations and are useful for a variety of applications, including ecosystem services assessments, climate change impact studies, biodiversity conservation, and resource management." Data were the best available at the time of compilation (2011) with current information represented by a combination of national-scale datasets and state or other regional data (e.g. soils) that could be reasonably aggregated.

Contacts

Contact :: David B Hamilton
Co-Investigator :: Daniel Manier
Distributor :: U.S. Geological Survey

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Extension: Land_Surface_Forms.zip
Land_Surface_Forms.tif		62.56 MB
Land_Surface_Forms.tif.aux.xml		2.63 KB
Land_Surface_Forms.tif.ovr		34.15 MB
Land_Surface_Forms.tif.vat.dbf		388 Bytes
Land_Surface_Forms.tif.xml Potential Metadata Source	View	17.45 KB
Land_Surface_Forms.tfw		83 Bytes

Purpose

This environmental dataset was one of several abiotic layers to provide best available conditions representing the landscape. The data collected and compiled for the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GPLCC) will inform regional-scale landscape assessments with spatially explicit representation of natural resource, habitat, conservation, management and other social and environmental values. Preliminary analyses will summarize spatial statistics, and data are ultimately expected to directly inform species and habitat distribution models and vulnerability assessments. Future research efforts applying these data may include regional hydrologic modeling, wetland habitat vulnerability and connectivity assessments, species distribution modeling, and investigation of interactions among land use, land cover and prairie habitat distributions. A simple summary of the data and discussion of potential applications and implications for future work (e.g., species distribution modeling and vulnerability assessments) will accompany the distribution of these data via the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GPLCC). Purpose provided by original data sources: "This dataset delineates the distribution of deductively-modeled NatureServe terrestrial ecosystems for the contiguous United States."

Land Surface Forms for the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative

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