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Filters: Types: ArcGIS REST Map Service (X) > partyWithName: Eastern Division Conservation Science of The Nature Conservancy (X)

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NOTE: This download link includes Fish Regions, Freshwater Ecoregions, and Freshwater Resilience. Freshwater ecoregions provide a global biogeographic regionalization of the Earth's freshwater biodiversity. These units are distinguished by patterns of native fish distribution resulting from large-scale geoclimatic processes and evolutionary history. The freshwater ecoregion boundaries generally, though not always, correspond with those of watersheds. Within individual ecoregions there will be turnover of species, such as when moving up or down a river system, but taken as a whole an ecoregion will typically have a distinct evolutionary history and/or suite of ecological processes (Abell et al. 2008). The WWF defined...
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Resilient stream systems are those that will support a full spectrum of biodiversity and maintain their functional integrity even as species compositions and hydrologic properties change in response to shifts in ambient conditions due to climate change. We examined all connected stream networks in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic for seven characteristics correlated with resilience. These included four physical properties (network length, number of size classes, number of gradients classes and number of temperature classes), and three condition characteristics (risk of hydrologic alterations, natural cover in the floodplain, and amount of impervious surface in the watershed). A network was defined as a continuous...
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A highly permeable landscape promotes resilience by facilitating range shifts and the reorganization of communities. Roads, development, dams, and other structures create resistance that interrupts or redirects movement and, therefore, lowers the permeability. Maintaining a connected landscape is the most widely cited strategy in the scientific literature for building resilience and has been suggested as an explanation for why there were few extinctions during the last period of comparable rapid climate change. This metric is an important component of resilience because it indicates whether a process is likely to be disrupted or how much access a species has to the micro-climates within its given neighborhood. ...
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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...
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**Symbology has been adjusted by the Open Space Institute from The Nature Conservancy's original "Geophysical Settings, 2016 Eastern U.S. and Canada" dataset.** The geophysical settings are defined by their physical properties – geology, soil, and elevation - that correspond to differences in the flora and fauna they support. They also differ in ecological character, in their value for agriculture or mining, and how they have been developed by people. For example, the region’s high granite mountains are both largely intact and topographically complex, whereas low coastal sandplains are both more fragmented and relatively flat. The geophyical settings classification enabled us to compare resilience characteristics...
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A "landform" is any physical, recognizable form or feature on the earth's surface that has a characteristic shape and that is produced by natural causes (USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service). Landforms are largely responsible for local variation in solar radiation, soil development, moisture availability, and susceptibility to wind and other disturbance. They therefore have a large influence on plant productivity and species distributions. This dataset maps 17 landforms that are commonly found in the Northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada. This dataset was developed by The Nature Conservancy as part of "Resilient Sites for Terrestrial Conservation in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region" found here: http://www.conservationgateway.org/ConservationByGeography/NorthAmerica/U...
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The objective of this study was to provide a set of useful condition attributes for perennial stream and river segment in the northeast states (ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT, NY, PA, NJ, DE, MD, VA, WV, and DC.). Only perennial streams and rivers with catchments of one square mile or larger as mapped in the NHD Plus 1:100,000 Verson 1 dataset were included in this analysis because smaller streams were too inconsistently mapped. Stream and river reach flowlines were taken from the NHD Plus V1 1:100,000 dataset and tagged with geographic units (watersheds, states, ecoregions) and their simplified stream and river habitat types (23 types) as defined in the "Northeast Habitat Guides: A companion to the terrestrial and aquatic...
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Resilient stream systems are those that will support a full spectrum of biodiversity and maintain their functional integrity even as species compositions and hydrologic properties change in response to shifts in ambient conditions due to climate change. We examined all connected stream networks in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic for seven characteristics correlated with resilience. These included four physical properties (network length, number of size classes, number of gradients classes and number of temperature classes), and three condition characteristics (risk of hydrologic alterations, natural cover in the floodplain, and amount of impervious surface in the watershed). A network was defined as a continuous...
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Conservation planning at any scale—regional, landscape level, or local—requires an understanding of patterns of environmental variation and biological diversity. This dataset was developed as a tool for assessing the biophysical character of landscapes, and for mapping the distribution and composition of community assemblages across those landscapes. Informed decisions on where to focus conservation efforts require such tools. Data on biological distributions are very often inadequate to a large-scale analysis of biodiversity. The close relationship of the physical environment to ecological process and biotic distributions underpins the ecological sciences, and in the absence of suitable biological datasets, conservation...
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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...
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Note: The download link includes Fish Regions, Freshwater Ecoregions, and Freshwater Resilience. Within each freshwater ecoregion, we defined one to four discrete fish regions using a cluster analysis of the USGS 8-digit Hydrologic Units (HUC) based on similarities in their native fish composition. The analysis was based on a previously developed list of native species present within each HUC (NatureServe, 2008). The cluster analysis defined up to four clusters within each freshwater ecoregion using similarity of composition (Linkage method: Flexible beta, Distance measure: Sorensen (Bray-Curtis), Flexible beta value of -0.250). To determine the faunal distinctiveness between clusters, we performed an indicator...


    map background search result map search result map Ecological Land Units Landforms, Northern Appalachians TNC Southeast Resilience Freshwater Resilience, Portfolio Rivers, Stratified by Fish Region and Freshwater Ecoregion, Northeast Stream Reaches for Geospatial Condition Assessment of Northeast Stream and River Habitat Types Freshwater Resilience, All Streams, Stratified by Fish Region and Freshwater Ecoregion, Northeast U.S. Fish Regions, Northeast Freshwater Ecoregions, Northeast Local Connectedness Stratified by Setting and Ecoregion with Regional Override, 2016 Eastern U.S. and Canada Landscape Diversity Stratified by Geophysical Setting and Ecoregion with Regional Override, 2016 Eastern U.S. and Canada Geophysical Settings, 2016 Eastern U.S. and Canada Freshwater Resilience, Portfolio Rivers, Stratified by Fish Region and Freshwater Ecoregion, Northeast Stream Reaches for Geospatial Condition Assessment of Northeast Stream and River Habitat Types TNC Southeast Resilience Freshwater Resilience, All Streams, Stratified by Fish Region and Freshwater Ecoregion, Northeast U.S. Landforms, Northern Appalachians Ecological Land Units Fish Regions, Northeast Freshwater Ecoregions, Northeast Local Connectedness Stratified by Setting and Ecoregion with Regional Override, 2016 Eastern U.S. and Canada Landscape Diversity Stratified by Geophysical Setting and Ecoregion with Regional Override, 2016 Eastern U.S. and Canada Geophysical Settings, 2016 Eastern U.S. and Canada