This report describes an effort of a team of 60 scientists led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to identify the places where nature’s own natural resilience is the highest. Thanks to the land’s diverse topography, bedrock, and soil, these climate-resilient sites are more likely to sustain native plants, animals, and natural processes into the future, becoming natural strongholds for diversity. To map their locations, The Nature Conservancy-led team used over 70 new and comprehensive datasets to find places that are buffered from the effects of climate change because the site offers a wide range of micro-climates within a highly connected area. In 2015, the results were published in a leading conservation science journal (Anderson et al. 2014). Now, in 2016, the map has been revised and expanded to cover 20 ecoregions, and new mapping approaches have been used to improve the accuracy and utility of the data, especially in the flatter and wetter parts of the region (Anderson et al. 2016a).
