The Prioritization Tool is a web application for identifying the best opportunities to restore rare and threatened habitats for Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) and other species in the Northeast. The goal underlying the development of the restoration tool was to identify areas of degraded habitat having high restoration potential, which if restored would contribute to the network of connected, intact, and resilient sites for biodiversity conservation mapped by Nature’s Network. The tool allows users to (1) display a series of prioritization maps developed for a set of pre-defined “scenarios” (e.g., American woodcock), and (2) create their own scenarios using a catalog of nearly 400 metrics.
The basic unit of analysis is the HUC12 watershed, although stream reach catchments are available for smaller geographies. Output datasets from the other Nature’s Network work groups, as well as datasets collected from various other partners, are used to determine which HUC12s rank highest for a given scenario. Users can download a spreadsheet or PDF file that summarizes each result.
The tool is available at: http://naturesnetwork.org/prioritization-tool/
