Designing Sustainable Landscapes: Representative Species Model: Eastern Box Turtle (Terapene carolina)

Box Turtle was selected as a representative species for the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project at the mid-Atlantic workshop of the North Atlantic LCC (https://scholarworks.umass.edu/designing_sustainable_landscapes/). The habitat clusters (ecological systems) and associated wildlife species that it represents generally comprise of mesic hardwood and mixed forests including southern and central hardwood forests (both Coastal Plain and Appalachian) and cove forests. The Landscape Capability (LC) index integrates habitat capability, prevalence and climate suitability into a single index that reflects the relative capacity of a site to support the species.