The “Modeling Habitat Connectivity to Support State Wildlife Action Plans in the Mid-South” project used a revised, expanded version of the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GCPO LCC) geographical area. The original GCPO LCC area was subdivided into five subgeographies. This revised description of the subgeographies is based on EPA Level 2 and Level 3 ecoregions. The Level 2 Southeastern USA Plains was divided into Level 3 units: West Gulf Coastal Plain, East Gulf Coastal Plain, and Inland Plateau, River Valleys, Hills (a combination of two Level 3 categories). Level 2 Mississippi Alluvial and Southeast Coastal Plains was divided into Mississippi Alluvial Valley and Mississippi Alabama Florida Coast [...]
Summary
The “Modeling Habitat Connectivity to Support State Wildlife Action Plans in the Mid-South” project used a revised, expanded version of the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GCPO LCC) geographical area. The original GCPO LCC area was subdivided into five subgeographies. This revised description of the subgeographies is based on EPA Level 2 and Level 3 ecoregions. The Level 2 Southeastern USA Plains was divided into Level 3 units: West Gulf Coastal Plain, East Gulf Coastal Plain, and Inland Plateau, River Valleys, Hills (a combination of two Level 3 categories). Level 2 Mississippi Alluvial and Southeast Coastal Plains was divided into Mississippi Alluvial Valley and Mississippi Alabama Florida Coast areas. The Appalachian subgeography was separated from the Level 2 Ozark/Ouachita-Appalachian Forests region. Since the Habitat Connectivity project used 12-digit hydrological unit (HUC12) watersheds to describe core areas, the ecoregions were converted to watershed polygons through a select by location process. Since both watersheds and EPA ecoregions are spatially complex, some editing (moving isolated watersheds from one ecoregion to another) was done to make the resulting subgeographies contiguous and compact. Most subgeography names follow the EPA ecoregion examples, but South Central Plains and Southeastern Plains were changed to East and West Gulf Coastal Plains, following the example of the GCPO LCC.
