Final Memo - Extending the Northeast Terrestrial Habitat Map to Atlantic Canada
Dates
Acquisition
2015-09
Summary
The Northeast United States and Atlantic Canada share many of the same types of forests, wetlands, and natural communities, and from a wildlife perspective the region is one contiguous forest. However, resources are classified and mapped differently on each side of the border, which creates challenges for habitat evaluation, species modeling, and predicting the effects of climate change. To remedy this, ecologists from The Nature Conservancy collaborated with a committee of scientists from various Canadian institutions to produce the first international map of terrestrial habitats for northeastern North America. The project used extensive spatial data on geology, soils, landforms, wetlands, elevation and climate. Additionally, all [...]
Summary
The Northeast United States and Atlantic Canada share many of the same types of forests, wetlands, and natural communities, and from a wildlife perspective the region is one contiguous forest. However, resources are classified and mapped differently on each side of the border, which creates challenges for habitat evaluation, species modeling, and predicting the effects of climate change. To remedy this, ecologists from The Nature Conservancy collaborated with a committee of scientists from various Canadian institutions to produce the first international map of terrestrial habitats for northeastern North America. The project used extensive spatial data on geology, soils, landforms, wetlands, elevation and climate. Additionally, all four provinces contributed spatially comprehensive forest inventory data consisting of 3 million polygons depicting the tree composition of individual forest stands. The Atlantic Conservation Data Centre contributed precise spatial locations of over 200,000 species. The resulting map shows the distribution of 40 upland and wetland habitats, 29 of which are shared by both countries. It has been integrated with the Northeast Terrestrial Habitat Map, which covers 13 northeast states and the District of Columbia in the U.S. This project was funded by the Department of the Interior Northeast Climate Science Center and the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative.
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Final Report.pdf
3.6 MB
application/pdf
Purpose
The objective of this project was to develop a comprehensive terrestrial habitat map for the Atlantic Canada section of the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative region by extending the Northeast Terrestrial Habitat Map (Ferree and Anderson 2011) to Maritime Canada and southern Quebec. The final map consists of a spatially comprehensive GIS grid of 30 meter pixels with a legend portraying the habitats of Canada using a standard classification that matches the US classification. The map can be used as a basis for climate change research, conservation inventory, species modeling, ecosystem service estimates, and other cross border research related to the extent and distribution of natural habitats.
Communities
National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers
