The Data Needs Assessment research project was undertaken to review the variety of resources on conservation planning to provide packages of products, data, and identified data gaps to improve conservation planning in the Appalachian LCC. A suite of core conservation planning products and data from principal investigators at Clemson University are now available to the Cooperative.
“Deliverables from this research include:
An analysis of State Wildlife Action Plans in the Appalachian LCC that describe how information contained in these plans can be linked to integrate state and local-scale efforts into a regional conservation framework;A list of 21 conservation planning tools, describing function and relevance of each towards the Cooperative conservation planning goals;Interpretive text and graphics of conservation planning tools shared through the LCC Web Portal for users to learn about the tools available and what purposes they could serve;Interpretive text and graphics that describes the data that can be posted to the Web Portal;A final report that assembles all these elements and provides recommendations on how LCC members and partners can use this information to collect finer-scaled data from states, expand on work accomplished at individual state levels and “scale up” to the LCC level, and deliver data in a format that is useful for individual states and regional planning.”