The Sonoran Institute and Lincoln Institute Land Policy State Trust Land Projectprovides information and tools to state trust land managers and engaged trust land stakeholders to help them meet the needs of trust beneficiaries.  These resources can also help Western communities protect their quality of life through improved planning and development and increased conservation of trust lands.

TheSonoran Instituteworks to promote community decisions that respect the land and people of the West.  TheLincoln Institute of Land Policyis a nonprofit institution founded to improve the quality of public debate and decisions in the areas of land policy and land-related taxation. The Institute's goals are to integrate theory and practice to better shape land policy and to provide a nonpartisan forum for discussion of the multidisciplinary forces that influence public policy.The mission of The Nature Conservancy is to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive.

The Nature Conservancy Ecoregional Assessments

TNC approaches conservation in a systematic, scientific manner following principles outlined in its 1996 publication Conservation By Design.Through a comprehensive planning effort that brings the best information on species and natural communities and involving hundreds of public and private partners, a conservation blueprint is developed that identifies a selected set of places that represents the full distribution and diversity of native species, natural communities and ecosystems in an ecoregion. If managed appropriately, a portfolio will ensure the long-term survival of all native life and natural communities, not just threatened species and communities.

Conservation planning begins at the ecoregional level which is defined as “relatively large areas of land and water that contain geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities … [that] share a large majority of their species, dynamics, and environmental conditions, and function together effectively as a conservation unit at global and continental scales.” The ecoregional plan results in a “portfolio,” a set of conservation areas within an ecoregion selected to represent and conserve the conservation targets and their genetic and ecological variation.

Each ecoregional assessment involves several steps and requires up to a few years to complete. TNC uses a “coarse-filter/fine-filter” approach to conservation planning. Initially, TNC planners and partners identify ecological systems, natural communities, and species to target for conservation. Coarse-filter conservation targets, such as terrestrial or aquatic ecological systems, are hypothesized to contain a full suite of representative species within intact units. Because many species are associated in an ecological system, all are captured when a particular ecological system is conserved. Fine-filter targets include those species that might not be captured by a coarse filter because they are especially rare or have limited distribution. They include species of special concern such as imperiled (rated G1 or G2), threatened or endangered species, species that are declining, endemic, disjunct, or vulnerable. Note that the ecoregional assessment identifies not only those ecological systems, natural communities, and species that are rare or threatened but also those that are common so that all the biodiversity of an ecoregion is represented in the resulting portfolio.

After selecting targets, TNC planners  and partners set conservation goals for them. Conservation goals consider the amount of the target needed to ensure its long-term viability, defined as the amount needed for a particular target to survive for at least 100 years. A target may have its conservation goals divided among subsections of an ecoregion to protect its natural distribution and genetic variability and to guard against the impact of disease or natural disaster. Next, the planners gather data on target occurrences and assess the quality (the condition) of the occurrences. Only the best occurrences are retained for inclusion into the portfolio for the ecoregion. Once all the necessary information has been gathered, a portfolio of conservation sites is assembled. The portfolio is designed to be efficient and optimal, that is, achieving the most conservation for the least cost. The assembly of the portfolio attempts to take into account the current or future threats to a particular area.

There is some variability from one ecoregional assessment to the next.  The assessments are only a snapshot in time of the optimal assemblage of lands and waters needed to host the full complement of species in an ecoregion.  They are continually being updated as new information and technology becomes available.

The information here makes no judgment on the compatibility of management activities on trust lands with the long-term survival of the conservation targets and the natural processes that sustain them within the identified conservation areas. These data are intended to assist trust land managers and interested stakeholders to aid in trust land decision-making now and in the future. 

About NatureServe and Natural Heritage Programs

NatureServe is a non-profit conservation organization that provides the scientific information and tools needed to help guide effective conservation action. NatureServe and its network of natural heritage programs are the leading source for information about rare and endangered species and threatened ecosystems.

NatureServe represents an international network of biological inventories—known as natural heritage programs or conservation data centers—operating in all 50U.S.states,Canada,Latin Americaand theCaribbean. Together, they not only collect and manage detailed local information on plants, animals, and ecosystems, but develop information products, data management tools, and conservation services to help meet local, national, and global conservation needs. The objective scientific information about species and ecosystems developed by NatureServe is used by all sectors of society—conservation groups, government agencies, corporations, academia, and the public—to make informed decisions about managing our natural resources.

How to use this information

The deliverables for the project are a geodatabase and a report. The geodatabase will allow trust land managers to access the information in the context of their current spatial databases. The geodatabase contains spatial information for the TNC conservation areas and the surface trust lands as well as tabular information on the conservation targets and the threats to the conservation areas (where available). See the schema for the geodatabase in Figure 1 and the metadata in the geodatabase itself for more information.

The work for the project was conducted in two phases. The first phase involved “Level 1” information. Level 1 data only applies to TNC conservation areas where ecoregional plans have set goals and delineated areas important for future conservation work (known as the conservation portfolio).  

The report for each state contains Level 1 information on each of the TNC conservation areas that overlap state trust lands. For each conservation area, the number and size of state trust land parcels that fall within its boundaries and the threats (if available) to the area are indicated. Next, the target species, communities, and ecological systems are given along with information about their conservation value (i.e., their global rank and US ESA rank, if available) as well as the conservation goal for the ecoregion.

The second phase includes “Level 2” information and identifies critically imperiled or imperiled (G1 or G2 ranked) biodiversity elements located on or near any trust land parcel, whether or not the trust land overlaps with a TNC conservation area. Level 2 information is derived from NatureServe and Heritage Program Element Occurrences, generalized to map quads (township – ranges inWyoming). These elements are referenced to specific trust land parcels.

Thus, Level 1 information gives a broad view of state trust lands in the context of TNC conservation assessments, while Level 2 information provides comprehensive information across the entire state, but it does not assess the importance of element occurrences in an overall ecoregional context. These two sets of information (Level 1 and 2) can be used together as a rich information source for decision making on state trust land parcels and within the landscape context in which they are situated.

The Level 1 information, representing the TNC ecoregional portfolio, may be viewed as a scientifically credible blueprint for protecting threatened and representative biodiversity for an entire ecoregion. The portfolio represents the most efficient (i.e. ecologically intact, economically feasible and requiring minimum habitat restoration) solution for biodiversity protection in the ecoregion.

TNC portfolio does not prescribe any specific management actions on any state trust land parcels. Those prescriptions can only be arrived at through specific evaluation and planning.  The Level 1 information only provides an understanding of the relative importance of each trust land parcel for overall biodiversity conservation and the particular species or habitats of concern in that area or ecoregion. Additionally, Level 1 data often contains specific information about threats to biodiversity which may or may not be applicable to state trust lands, given current condition and management status.

The Level 2 information is intended to fill the information gaps outside of the TNC assessment process. These are the most up-to-date information available for at-risk species (critically imperiled or imperiled in a global context). This information may be used to evaluate the conservation value of any state trust land parcel as habitat for specific species. However, the level 2 information does not place these species in the context of an overall ecoregional conservation plan as in the Level 1 information.

Because of the data sharing restrictions on the NatureServe data, the level 2 information has been generalized to 7.5’ map quads for all states exceptWyoming.Wyomingdata have been generalized to township-ranges.  These generalized data were then spatially intersected with state trust land parcels. Therefore, each trust land parcel is attributed with species information for the map quad (or quads) in which it is located.  For specific, detailed, planning purposes, state trust land managers should contact NatureServe (natureserve.org) or the appropriate heritage program for up-to-date and spatially precise information.

Data Citation

NatureServe and its Natural Heritage Member Programs, 2006. NatureServe Central Databases.Arlington,Virginia,U.S.A.