Resilient Sites for Terrestrial Conservation in Eastern North America
Climate change reshapes habitats and species distributions, challenging traditional conservation. Protecting diverse geophysical settings—like coastal sands, valleys, and summits—ensures resilience for plants and animals under current and future climates.
Subject Tags
- Large scale protection
- Climate resilience
- Biodiversity
Abstract
Climate change is creating an increasingly dynamic natural world by shifting species distributions and rearranging habitats. Consequently, conservationists need a way to identify important areas for protection that does not assume that the locations of existing plants and animals will stay the same. Rather than trying to protect diversity one species at a time, the key is to protect the different “stages” upon which the drama of nature unfolds. In the Eastern United States, these stages are based strongly on geology and consist of recognizable geophysical settings such as coastal sands, limestone valleys, granite summits or silt floodplains that each support a distinct set of species. Conserving a range of physical environments offers an approach to conservation that protects a diversity of plants and animals under both current and future climates.
Additional Resources
Explore Conservation Opportunities in Strategies and Opportunities to Conserve Resilient Land Storymap
Explore the data in the Resilient Land Mapping Tool
For the most up-to-date data see CRCS’s National Resilient and Connected Network Download Page
Download the original data that accompanies the report:
Resilience Site Data for Terrestrial Conservation in the Eastern US
Citation
Anderson, M.G., A. Barnett, M. Clark, C. Ferree, A. Olivero Sheldon, J. Prince. 2016. Resilient Sites for Terrestrial Conservation in Eastern North America. The Nature Conservancy, Eastern Conservation Science.
TNC Authors
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Mark G. Anderson
Director of Conservation Science
The Nature Conservancy
Email: manderson@tnc.org -
Analie Barnett
Landscape Ecologist, North America Office
The Nature Conservancy
Email: abarnett@tnc.org -
Melissa Clark
Spatial Ecology Lead, North America Office
The Nature Conservancy
Email: melissa_clark@tnc.org -
Arlene Olivero
Aquatic Ecologist/GIS Analyst, North America Office
The Nature Conservancy
Email: arlene_olivero@tnc.org