Paul Leonard, of the Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation at Clemson University, provides an overview of the Appalachian LCC Conservation Design Project. The first part of the presentation focuses on the first phase of the project, which identified key conservation elements in the region that are essential for sustaining biodiversity and the benefits of nature. He then summaries the next steps of the research in phase 2, where Clemson researchers and technical teams will refine phase I by selecting metrics to fit into the conservation design framework, determine resolution for region-wide index, and discuss major threats and determine best scale to examine integrity.
