Northeast Regional Conservation Needs Program

Creation of Regional Habitat Cover Maps:
Application of the NE Terrestrial Habitat Classification System

Project Director: Mark G. Anderson Ph.D., Director of Conservation Science
The Nature Conservancy, Eastern Region

In response to the Northeast Regional Conservation Needs Grant Program Request for Proposals, The Nature Conservancy’s proposal addresses Priority #1 Regional Conservation Need, Creation of Regional Habitat Cover Maps.

Product : A comprehensive wildlife habitat map of the eastern region, including all states from Maine to Virginia, west to New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The map will consist of a spatially comprehensive GIS grid of 30 meter pixels with a legend portraying the Northeastern Terrestrial Habitat Classification System (NETHCS). We envision a series of map legends that range from coarser-scale with higher accuracy (habitats or groups of habitats) to finer-scale with lower accuracy (NVC associations or alliances). This assumes that not every habitat type will be equally amenable to the mapping procedures described here.

In addition, NatureServe and The Nature Conservancy are partners in a project to map the Delaware Estuary Watershed using the Terrestrial Ecological Systems Classification. This project relies on an intensive field effort in which plot data are collected to validate a draft Ecological Systems map of the watershed. This project is currently in progress, and field data collected in this project will be available for use in the NETHCS mapping project. In essence, all of the New Jersey and Delaware portions of the watershed, as well as portions of the Pennsylvania section, will be mapped in conjunction with this project through other funds. Although most of the funding from this project is federal in origin and cannot be included as match, the Delaware Estuary watershed portion of the study area will be completed without cost to NEAFWA.

Full proposal can be found here, as a .doc.

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