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Conservation Gateway » Conservation By Geography » North America » United States » Eastern US » Science and Data » Terrestrial Projects » Ecoregional Plans » NAP

Northern Appalachian Ecoregion

Maps | Conservation targets | Spatial data | Appendices

The namesake and unifying feature of the Northern Appalachian–Acadian (NAP) Ecoregion are the northern Appalachian Mountains, which, along with maritime and coast influences, have defined the geologic, natural and cultural history of the northeast.

The NAP Ecoregion extends from the Tug Hill and Adirondack ranges of New York, across the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, then into Maine and Maritime Canada. It includes all the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, as well as Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Magdalene Islands) and the part of Québec extending from the Gaspé Peninsula, southwesterly through the Appalachian complex of eastern Québec to the United States border, south of Sherbrooke.

 


The Ecoregion at a Glance

  • Total acres = 82,865,628
  • Rare species = 523
  • All plants, vertebrates and macroinvertebrate species = 3,844
  • 83% Forest
  • 4% Wetlands
  • 11% Water
  • 97% Natural cover
  • 3% Developed
  • 22% Agriculture
  • 28% Secured and
  • 7% Protected land

Maps

Maps are available as a high-quality pdf download, or on the TNC map gallery. Click the appropriate links to view the map of interest.

Subregions | pdf | Map gallery
Ecoregional portfolio | pdf | Map gallery
Topography | pdf | Map gallery
Satellite image of region | pdf | Map gallery
Elevation classes | pdf | pdf | Map gallery
Bedrock and surficial geology | pdf | Map gallery
Landforms | pdf | Map gallery
Ecological Land Units (ELUs) | pdf | Map gallery
Landcover | pdf | Map gallery
Secured areas | pdf | Map gallery
Freshwater systems portfolio | pdf | Map gallery
Species element occurrences | pdf | Map gallery
Matrix forest blocks | pdf | Map gallery
Summit ecosystems | pdf | Map gallery
Steep slope ecosystems | pdf | Map gallery
Bowl, hollow, and ravine ecosystems | pdf | Map gallery
Wet basin ecosystems | pdf | Map gallery
Riparian and floodplain ecosystems | Map gallery
Coastal ecosystems | pdf | Map gallery

Conservation targets

 Comprehensive protection of all species and the lands and waters that sustain them can only be approached using a “coarse-filter / fine-filter” strategy. “Coarse-filter” conservation targets implicitly protect species through the conservation of ecosystems and landscapes, a strategy that accounts for the vast majority of the species present in the ecoregion. “Fine-filter” targets are those species that we believe cannot be adequately conserved by the protection of ecosystems alone but require explicit and direct conservation attention. The links below lead to summary pages on NAP conservation target classes.

Ecosystems (Coarse-filter targets)
See the ecosystems introduction chapter (pdf) for an overview.
Forest Ecosystems: Terrestrial non-forested ecosystems: Wetland ecosystems: Aquatic systems:
Species (Fine-filter targets)
Download the chapter containing all species information here, and the species goals results with distribution maps here. The table of numerical and distribution goals for all species can be downloaded as an excel table here, and the table of all primary target species occurrences and their attributes can be found here as an excel table.

Spatial data

 Download a zip file containing all NAP spatial data here.

Vector Data

All Floodplains Shapefile of all floodplains in the ecoregion.
All Wetbasins Shapefile of all wetbasins in the ecoregion.
ecoregions Outline of the ecoregional boundary.
edu Outline of the ecological drainage units (EDUs) for the NAP ecoregion.
matrix Matrix forest blocks.
porfolio-stms Portfolio streams.
securedareas Secured areas for the NAP ecoregion.
subregions Outline of the subregion boundaries.
sys-ravine90 Ravine and bowl ecosystems.

Raster Data

elu Ecological Land Units.
Landcover Landcover from the NLCD.

Appendices

The Northern Appalachian Ecoregional Assessment includes many files that are referenced as appendices in the report chapters. They contain detailed data on all classes of conservation targets in the NAP assessment. Clicking on the links below will open each file. These are also available in the full report (see box on right for download).

All conservation targets Final site list (xls) - contains entire final portfolio site table, with additional sheets for each state and province. The tables are structured for viewing, not manipulating.

Terrestrial tables
Geology of New Brunswick (xls)
Geology of Nova Scotia (xls)
Geology of Quebec (xls)
NAP portfolio matrix sites (xls)
NAP primary species targets (xls)
NAP species goals and distribution (xls)

Aquatic tables
Appendix 1 fish by 8-digit HUC (xls)
Appendix 2 primary aquatic targets (xls)
Lacustrine key (doc)
Lake NHD data table (xls)
ME and NH lakes size and depth (xls)
ME lake process (doc)
ME HUC10 systems (xls)
ME systems summary (xls)
NAP Region 1 size 2 system summary (xls)
NAP Region 1 size 3 system summary (xls)
Upper Hudson size 2 summary statistics (xls)
Upper Hudson size 3 summary statistics (xls)
NID dams metadata (xls)
RF3 100m class buffer condition (xls)
Size 1 condition table (xls)
Size 2 condition table (xls)
Size 3 condition table (xls)
Portfolio stream list (xls)
Portfolio streams by system goal summary (xls)
Summary of ecoregional statistics (xls)

 
 
Please Cite as:
Anderson, M.G., Vickery, B., Gorman, M., Gratton, L., Morrison, M., Maillet, J., Olivero, A., Ferree, C., Morse, D., Kehm, G., Rosalska, K., Khanna, S., and S. Bernstein. 2006. The Northern Appalachian / Acadian Ecoregion: Ecoregional Assessment, Conservation Status and Resource CD. The Nature Conservancy, Eastern Conservation Science and The Nature Conservancy of Canada: Atlantic and Quebec regions.
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Key Resources