The Nature Conservancy’s Southeast Resilience Project aimed to identify key places areas for conservation based on land characteristics that increase diversity and resilience. This is the estimated resilience score, based on the combined scores of landscape diversity and local connectedness, and ranked relative to the geophysical setting and ecoregion. The estimated resilience score is given as a SD category based on its standard normalized score for the setting and ecoregion. The Resilience Project DOES NOT take into account sea level rise.
A climate-resilient conservation portfolio includes sites representative of all geophysical settings selected for their landscape diversity and local connectedness. We developed methods to identify such a portfolio. First, we mapped geophysical settings across the entire study area. Second, within each geophysical setting we located sites with diverse topography that were highly connected by natural cover. Third, we compared the identified sites with the current network of conservation lands and with The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC’s) portfolio of important biodiversity sites identified based on rare species and natural community locations. Using this information we noted geophysical settings that were underrepresented in current conservation and identified places for each setting that could serve as strongholds for diversity both now and into the future.
We prioritized among examples of the same setting using two categories of physical characteristics that increase resilience. The first, landscape diversity, refers to the number of microhabitats and climatic gradients available within a given area. Landscape diversity is measured by counting the variety of landforms, the elevation range, and the wetland density. Because topographic diversity buffers against climatic effects, the persistence of most species within a given area increases in landscapes with a wide variety of microclimates. Local connectedness, the second factor, is defined as the number of barriers and the degree of fragmentation within a landscape. A highly permeable landscape promotes resilience by facilitating range shifts and the reorganization of communities.
The study area includes the seven states of NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, TN, and KY in their entirety as well as large portions of VA and WV, and a tiny portion of MD. Scientists and conservation planners from those states helped with the development of these methods, the evaluation of datasets, and review of the results.
