Resources

LCCs have produced a wealth of informational documents, reports, fact sheets, webinars and more to help support resource managers in designing and delivering conservation at landscape scales.

Hexagon units with target layer information used by Clemson University in the Marxan analysis of the Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC).

Date posted: June 23, 2018

An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. In the United States the Program is administered by the National Audubon Society.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Efforts to model and predict long-term variations in climate, based on scientific understanding of climatological processes, have grown rapidly in their sophistication to the point that models can be used to develop reasonable expectations of regional climate change.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center has developed the Landscape Dynamics Assessment Tool (LanDAT) to help natural resource conservation practitioners monitor and assess impacts on changing landscapes and the ecological services and benefits they provide to people. LanDAT features a web-based map viewer that includes an annually-updated set of spatial data products as well as a website that provides a comprehensive overview of the tool and case studies of forest threats and their impacts to specific natural resources.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, initiated in 2009 and finalized in 2014, provides a national vision for wildland fire management. This highly collaborative effort establishes three overarching goals, and describes stakeholder-driven processes for achieving them: (1) resilient landscapes; (2) fire-adapted communities; and (3) safe and effective wildfire response. The scientific rigor of this program was ensured with the establishment of the National Science and Analysis Team (NSAT).

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in all months, 1950-1999.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The Urban Influence measure developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service (ERS) identifies metropolitan counties by population size and outlines where natural area and urban boundaries exist. This can help to indicate where increased stresses on ecosystem services may occur.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Total Basal Area (BA) for all tree species is in square feet per acre.

To monitor the potential hazards posed by invasive pathogens, the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team (FHTET) created a national database designed to assess the potential hazards on tree mortality and identify forest ecosystems at risk of invasive or pathogenic threats.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team (FHTET) was created by the Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry in February 1995 to develop and deliver forest health technology services to field personnel in public and private organizations in support of the Forest Service's land ethic, to "promote the sustainability of ecosystems by ensuring their health, diversity, and productivity." This dataset shows the total basal area of all tree species as square feet per acre.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a national, publicly available survey provided by the U.S. Census Bureau that collects information about population, education, housing, economic status, and more. Planners, public officials, entrepreneurs, and researchers rely on the data collected through this survey to help understand community conditions and to support community planning efforts.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in summer months, 2005-2014.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in winter months, 1950-1999.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in summerl months, 1950-1999.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in summer months, 2005-2014.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and the USDA Census of Agriculture (completed every five years, most recently in 2012) are primary sources of regionally detailed data concerning the productivity, economics, land use, and multiple other characteristics of agriculture and ranching in the United States. The county-level data on farmland irrigation provides one example of the many ways in which agriculture impacts, and is impacted by, natural resource availability and sustainability.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The capacity of ecosystems to provide services such as carbon storage, clean water, and forest products is determined not only by variations in ecosystem properties across landscapes, but also by ecosystem dynamics over time. ForWarn is a system developed by the U.S. Forest Service to monitor vegetation change using satellite imagery for the continental United States. It provides near real-time change maps that are updated every eight days, and summaries of these data also provide long-term change maps from 2000 to the present.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The Landcover Mosaic map (LCM) can be used to answer the question: What is the mixture of agricultural/urban/natural landcover types surrounding a given land parcel?

Researchers at the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station have utilized the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) to calculate a suite of land cover and forest fragmentation metrics at landscape scales. These datasets yield rich spatial information about urbanization, its effects on forests, and how urban areas interface and mix with rural, agricultural, and forest landscapes.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, initiated in 2009 and finalized in 2014, provides a national vision for wildland fire management. This highly collaborative effort establishes three overarching goals, and describes stakeholder-driven processes for achieving them: (1) resilient landscapes; (2) fire-adapted communities; and (3) safe and effective wildfire response. The scientific rigor of this program was ensured with the establishment of the National Science and Analysis Team (NSAT).

Date posted: June 23, 2018

WaSSI (Water Supply Stress Index) predicts how climate, land cover, and human population change may impact water availability and carbon sequestration at the watershed level (about the size of a county) across the lower 48 United States. WaSSI users can select and adjust temperature, precipitation, land cover, and water use factors to simulate change scenarios for any timeframe from 1961 through the year 2100.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The capacity of ecosystems to provide services such as carbon storage, clean water, and forest products is determined not only by variations in ecosystem properties across landscapes, but also by ecosystem dynamics over time. ForWarn is a system developed by the U.S. Forest Service to monitor vegetation change using satellite imagery for the continental United States. It provides near real-time change maps that are updated every eight days, and summaries of these data also provide long-term change maps from 2000 to the present.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

USFS Forest Inventory Analysis

Through application of a nearest-neighbor imputation approach, mapped estimates of forest carbon density were developed for the contiguous United States using the annual forest inventory conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, MODIS satellite imagery, and ancillary geospatial datasets.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Researchers at the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station have utilized the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) to calculate a suite of land cover and forest fragmentation metrics at landscape scales. These datasets yield rich spatial information about urbanization, its effects on forests, and how urban areas interface and mix with rural, agricultural, and forest landscapes.The Forest Area Density (FDEN) map (Landscape Forest Density) illustrates the proportion of the landscape around a given forest area that is also forested.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Geographic relationships among energy infrastructure development, regional economic linkages, and the environment is crucial for understanding the impacts of Appalachian energy extraction activities and for regional planning efforts focused on the ecosystem services that may be affected. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) provides impartial and independent data on the nation's energy infrastructure, its sources, flows, and end uses, as well as forecasts and outlooks.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The capacity of ecosystems to provide services such as carbon storage, clean water, and forest products is determined not only by variations in ecosystem properties across landscapes, but also by ecosystem dynamics over time. ForWarn is a system developed by the U.S. Forest Service to monitor vegetation change using satellite imagery for the continental United States. It provides near real-time change maps that are updated every eight days, and summaries of these data also provide long-term change maps from 2000 to the present.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Using GIS, the SILVIS Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison calculated housing and population counts at the block group level with data from the decennial U.S. Census to produce a spatially explicit dataset for the conterminous U.S. This data can help to understand where on the landscape the most and the least dense populations of people live. Housing density can be used as an indicator of urbanization and land-use intensification.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, initiated in 2009 and finalized in 2014, provides a national vision for wildland fire management. This highly collaborative effort establishes three overarching goals, and describes stakeholder-driven processes for achieving them: (1) resilient landscapes; (2) fire-adapted communities; and (3) safe and effective wildfire response. The scientific rigor of this program was ensured with the establishment of the National Science and Analysis Team (NSAT).

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, initiated in 2009 and finalized in 2014, provides a national vision for wildland fire management. This highly collaborative effort establishes three overarching goals, and describes stakeholder-driven processes for achieving them: (1) resilient landscapes; (2) fire-adapted communities; and (3) safe and effective wildfire response. The scientific rigor of this program was ensured with the establishment of the National Science and Analysis Team (NSAT).

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has estimated water use for the United States every 5 years since 1950. Estimates are provided for groundwater and surface-water sources, for fresh and saline water quality, and by sector or category of use. Estimates have been made at the State level since 1950, and at the county level since 1985. Water-use estimates by watershed were made from 1950 through 1995, first at the water-resources region level (HUC2), and later at the hydrologic cataloging unit level (HUC8).

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Throughout the Caribbean, conservation is ecologically, politically, and socially
challenging due to a number of factors including globalization, climate change, loss of
biodiversity, and the spread of invasive species. Relationships between organizations and
institutions that govern the region’s natural and cultural resources are key to conservation
success as partners work to implement plans to meet science, capacity, and information
needs. However, the complex challenges involved in conservation work and tenuous relationships

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in all months, 2005-2014.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) provides impartial and independent data on the nation's energy infrastructure, its sources, flows, and end uses, as well as forecasts and outlooks. Location information for specific extraction activities, as well as power plants and other supply chain components, can help reveal the regional nature of specific impacts and the often large distances between those effects and end-use drivers.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the LandCast 2050 High-Resolution Population Projection models future national-level human population densities. The models estimate the probability of a population being at a particular location, which measures where people will likely be in the future, not necessarily their places of residence.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Natural protected areas are geographic spaces clearly defined and delimited through legal or other effective means for the long-term conservation of their natural resources, biodiversity, ecosystem services and associated cultural values. This GIS file provides the latest compilation (as of the 15th of December of 2015) of the natural protected areas of Puerto Rico.

Date posted: June 23, 2018

This report represents a synthesis of 40 existing plans and strategies from our partner
organizations and others, input from the greater U.S. Caribbean conservation community, and
synthesis by the Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative (CLCC) Science Plan Advisory
Team. The goals of the Science Strategy: Mission Alignment are to (1) identify shared
conservation objectives and (2) serve as a foundation for a broad science strategy which will
guide collaborative actions for natural and cultural resource conservation in light of global

Date posted: June 23, 2018

Governmental and nongovernmental organizations charged with managing
natural resources increasingly emphasize the need to work across jurisdictional boundaries.
Their challenge is to manage shifting resources under rapidly changing climate and
land-use scenarios. Scientists, resource managers, and conservation planners, and their
organizations and agencies routinely collaborate on projects to solve specific problems.
Cooperative frameworks to programmatically address complex social–environmental issues

Date posted: June 23, 2018

This study quantitatively explores whether land cover changes have a substantive impact on simulated streamflow within the tropical island setting of Puerto Rico. The Precipitation Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) was used to compare streamflow simulations based on five static parameterizations of land cover with those based on dynamically varying parameters derived from four land cover scenes for the period 1953-2012. The PRMS simulations based on static land cover illustrated consistent differences in simulated streamflow across the island.

Date posted: June 23, 2018
Webinar Preview Image

Presenters: Ben Walker & Pauline Drobney, USFWS, Prairie Reconstruction Initiative

The PRI Database is a powerful tool for improving our success at reconstructing prairies. Documentation of what occurred on a site is crucial to understanding and evaluating the outcome of that reconstruction. By analyzing the results of multiple reconstructions across multiple contexts, we can better understand which factors have the greatest impact on the effectiveness of prairie reconstruction techniques and management strategies.

Date posted: March 13, 2018
Preview image of CCAST kickoff webinar 22 feb 2018.pdf

Join us for the launch of the Collaborative Conservation and Adaptation Strategy Toolbox (CCAST), an online portal for access to case studies contributed by practitioners across the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan deserts and the “Sky Islands” of the Madrean Archipelago.

Date posted: March 5, 2018
Webinar Preview Image

Presented by: David Hennessy of Michigan State University and Tong Wang of South Dakota State University

Date posted: February 8, 2018
River flow images from presentation

Because diversions of stream flow in the Rio Grande watershed predate stream gaging, there are no historical data that describe the natural flow regime of the river. We present the results of our work to define the natural flow regime of the northern branch of the river upstream from Presido/Ojinaga and of the Río Conchos. We demonstrate that more than 90% of the natural flow is not used for upstream agriculture and municipal uses or is lost due to reservoir evaporation and riparian zine evapotranspiration.

Date posted: February 6, 2018
Slide about beetles from presentation

On its southbound course from Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico, the Rio Grande provides water resources for more than 13 million people. The quantity of water flowing into the northern section of the river depends on how much snowpack from the Rocky Mountains melts into runoff, and on seasonal precipitation rates during and after the snowmelt season. This project combines historical data and climate model projections to assess and enhance seasonal prediction models relating winter snowpack to subsequent runoff in the upper Rio Grande.

Date posted: February 6, 2018
Title slide of the presentation.

Severe droughts and economic development in the Rio Grande Basin have significantly impacted the quantity and quality of water for natural and human systems, consequently affecting ecosystem services of the river. Studies on human perceptions about ecosystem benefits of the Rio Grande, including economic value of water ecosystem services are scarce, but crucial to improve resilience of the river watershed.

Date posted: February 6, 2018