This is an older version of the Southeast Blueprint.
The Blueprint analysis, maps, and data on this site represent the level of value – high or medium – of healthy natural resources and their potential to benefit fish, wildlife and plants. It is part of our effort to reach beyond our Region’s conservation community’s to begin talking with a range of groups about areas that have value for conservation. This information is crafted to help us get a glimpse of the of the Region as we think about emerging trends, better planning and better conversations with everyone who has a stake in what the Southeast Region might look like in 2060.
Private lands identified on the map may be good candidates for voluntary conservation programs, which help keep working lands working. There are numerous public and private conservation programs that seek to conserve natural resources while supporting and respecting private landownership. Examples include mitigation or conservation banks, conservation easements, voluntary land acquisition programs as well as other innovative conservation planning opportunities such as rural clustering, deer management cooperatives, transfer of development rights, and other stewardship efforts.
Known Issues:
- Areas where multiple LCC Blueprints cover the same geography are likely overvalued. These areas include parts of West Virginia, Southeast Virginia, North Florida, and Missouri. This issue is most problematic in West Virginia and Southeast Virginia due to differences in the methods used to integrate aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems between the South Atlantic/Appalachian LCC and the North Atlantic LCC. This issue is less of a problem in North Florida where the consistency among the 3 blueprints was relatively high.
- Corridors are undervalued in the western part of SECAS as only the South Atlantic, North Atlantic, and Peninsular Florida Blueprint formally included corridors.
- Responses to future threats like climate change, urban growth, and sea-level rise are not fully captured in SECAS. Only the South Atlantic, North Atlantic, and Gulf Coast Prairie formally included climate change, urban growth, and sea-level rise.
- While the input data from each LCC Blueprint is intended to identify areas of high and medium conservation value, approaches and methods varied so specific definitions of “high conservation value” varied by LCC region.
The list below indicates the input data from 8 different LCCs used to develop the SECAS Blueprint v1.0:
- South Atlantic: Blueprint_2_1 (raster)
- Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks: secas_cbv1_submit_rev.img
- Gulf Coast Prairie: gcp_blueprint_footprint_high.shp, gcp_blueprint_footprint_mid.shp
- Missouri: Missouri_cfa_huc_sum2.tif
- Appalachian: sp_rich_lcc (raster)
- North Atlantic: acores2nd_s (raster), aq_buffers (raster), tu-cores-connect.shp
- Caribbean: Watershed_Ranking_PR.shp
Predefined priority classes from each LCC were used in developing SECAS Blueprint v1.0. When priorities were continuous we used a quantile classification and selected break points to get close to 30% of the LCC area in high priority and 20% of the LCC area in medium priority. Any areas not classified as high or medium are set to transparent allowing layers underneath show through. The list below explains the classification of data values for each LCC involved (If a data value is not shown in the list then it is classified with no color):
- Peninsular Florida: High – Priority 1, Medium – Priority 2
- South Atlantic: High – Highest and High, Medium – Medium and Corridors
- Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks: High – 1 and 2, Medium – 3
- Gulf Coast Prairie: High - gcp_blueprint_footprint_mid.shp, Medium - gcp_blueprint_footprint_high.shp
- Missouri: High – 5 through 7, Medium – 4
- Appalachian: High – 5 through 12, Medium – 4
- North Atlantic: High – Aquatic Cores, Terrestrial Cores; Medium – Aquatic Buffers, Terrestrial Connector
- Caribbean: High – 1 through 8, Medium – 9 through 12
The individual LCC blueprint that is on top is based on how long that blueprint effort has been going on. The above list is how the data layers should be ordered in the Table of Contents of ArcMap to correctly display SECAS Blueprint v1.0 if looking at the individual LCC blueprints.
Once the data were classified at the individual LCC level, they were reclassified to values of 1 and 2. A value of 1 signifies medium priority while a value of 2 signifies high priority. After all the individual LCC blueprints were reclassified they were mosaiced together to create one seamless blueprint for all of SECAS. The new layer was then resampled to 60 meter cell size in order to be compliant with ScienceBase and DataBasin platforms.
