Designing Sustainable Landscapes: Local and Regional Vulnerability

Local and HUC6 regional vulnerability are two of the principal Designing Sustainable Landscapes (DSL) landscape conservation design (LCD) products, which are best understood in the context of the full LCD process described in detail in the technical document on landscape design (McGarigal et al 2017). T These products were initially developed for the Connecticut River watershed as part of the Connect the Connecticut project (www.connecttheconnecticut.org) — a collaborative partnership under the auspices of the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NALCC), and subsequently developed for the entire Northeast region as part of the Nature's Network project (www.naturesnetwork.org). These two vulnerability products represent the vulnerability of high-valued places to future development, but differ in whether they reflect potential impacts of development on connectivity independent of any designated terrestrial cores (local vulnerability) or dependent on the designated cores (HUC6 regional vulnerability).