Management and Conservation Stewardship of Alaska Lands, 2006, The Nature Conservancy

Dates

Publication Date: 2006

Citation

The Nature Conservancy in Alaska, 2006, Management and Conservation Stewardship of Alaska Lands, 2006, The Nature Conservancy.

Summary

This dataset compiles land ownership and management data from state and federal agencies to create a map showing ownership, management, and conservation status of all land in Alaska. State, federal, and private lands, including Native corporations and Native allotments, are included. Conservation status describes the degree to which land, particularly public land, is legally designated and explicitly managed for biodiversity conservation. The most common classification, developed by the USGS GAP Program (www.gap.uidaho.edu), classifies land management types into four conservation status categories according to the degree to which the land is explicitly managed for conservation. In general, conservation status 1 and 2 lands have a stronger [...]

Summary

This dataset compiles land ownership and management data from state and federal agencies to create a map showing ownership, management, and conservation status of all land in Alaska. State, federal, and private lands, including Native corporations and Native allotments, are included. Conservation status describes the degree to which land, particularly public land, is legally designated and explicitly managed for biodiversity conservation. The most common classification, developed by the USGS GAP Program (www.gap.uidaho.edu), classifies land management types into four conservation status categories according to the degree to which the land is explicitly managed for conservation. In general, conservation status 1 and 2 lands have a stronger emphasis on conservation protections and have legal designations that are very challenging to change. Conservation status 3 and 4 lands have no mandated conservation management or are used primarily for human activity. Conservation status 1 and 2 lands are assumed to provide high and medium protection, respectively, of the natural resources that occur on those lands. The Nature Conservancy in Alaska and other conservation practitioners (Duffy et al 1999) have found that the GAP categories cannot be applied directly to management of Alaska lands in the same way as in the lower 48 states for several reasons. First, the Alaska National Interests Land Conservation Act allowed uses of federal conservation lands that are typically banned in the rest of the country. For example in Alaska (but nowhere else), motorized vehicles are permitted in wilderness areas for traditional activities, such as subsistence hunting and gathering. Second, state conservation land designations have not been rated for conservation status. Third, national parks and preserves and wildlife refuges in Alaska tend to be managed more similarly to each other than the same units are in the lower 48 states and most have minimal levels of development. To determine how to assign conservation status to Alaska lands, we reviewed the ANILCA legislation and state laws and regulations for state conservation units and interviewed federal and state land managers to help us understand how those laws and regulations are applied to the conservation units. We also reviewed the guidelines that GAP uses to assign conservation status (www.gap.uidaho.edu/handbook) and developed a dichotomous key to assist us in assigning conservation status. We defined intermediate conservation status categories for Alaska to distinguish significant differences within the four GAP categories. The most protected lands, conservation status 1 and 1.5, are managed for the entire ecosystem and have minimal development. Status 1 lands, national parks and wilderness areas, are distinguished from Status 1.5 lands, national preserves and wildlife refuges, by restrictions on motorized access and sport hunting. All or selected natural features are protected by law or a management plan on the cumulative status 2 lands, but low intensity human use occurs on more than 5% of the land. These lands include state parks and refuges, portions of national forests not used for timber harvest, wild and scenic rivers, and Bureau of Land Management conservation areas. Status 3 lands may protect selected natural features, but the intent of the management is for intensive human activities like resource extraction or motorized recreation on more than 5% of the land. Recreation areas, military bases, and national forests fall into this category. We separated status 4 lands into public and private ownership. These public lands are developed or the management intent is primarily for human uses, such as mining. The management intent for the private lands, which include Native corporations' holdings and allotments, is unknown. For some analyses, the Alaska conservation status categories can be collapsed to the four GAP categories, 1 - 4. We also employed a protected areas categorization developed by the The World Conservation Union (IUCN) to characterize land management in Alaska. The IUCN categories are more descriptive than ordinal; we applied the IUCN codes to Alaska based on those descriptions. Once conservation status of the different land management types in Alaska was determined, we mapped land management types and the corresponding conservation status across the state. To develop a land management dataset for Alaska, we collected GIS datasets from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Chugach National Forest, Tongass National Forest, and US Fish and Wildlife Service. In total, 36 GIS datasets were joined to develop a statewide land management dataset. We mapped the conservation status of each land management type represented in the spatial dataset. Many of the attributes for the dataset have been patterned after those in the Protected Areas Database (PAD), which was developed by Conservation Biology Institute (www.consbio.org/cbi/applied_research/PAD/index.htm).

Contacts

Point of Contact :: The Nature Conservancy
Distributor :: National GAP Analysis Program, The Nature Conservancy
Metadata Contact :: The Nature Conservancy
Originator :: The Nature Conservancy in Alaska

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Shapefile: CMS_polygons.zip
CMS_polygons.shp.xml Original FGDC Metadata	View	48.55 KB
CMS_polygons.cpg		5 Bytes
CMS_polygons.dbf		85.8 MB
CMS_polygons.prj		145 Bytes
CMS_polygons.sbn		1.77 MB
CMS_polygons.sbx		23.13 KB
CMS_polygons.shp		174.38 MB
CMS_polygons.shx		1.5 MB

Purpose

The Nature Conservancy in Alaska created this data set in order to analyze how land in Alaska is managed for biodiversity. The Nature Conservancy identifies places in Alaska that are important for the long-term conservation of Alaska's biodiversity. This analysis was part of The Nature Conservancy's project to design a Statewide Blueprint for Conservation in Alaska. For more about the statewide blueprint for Alaska, see nature.org/alaska.

Management and Conservation Stewardship of Alaska Lands, 2006, The Nature Conservancy

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