Designing Sustainable Landscapes: Representative Species Model: Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus)

Piping Plover was selected as a representative species for the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project of the North Atlantic LCC (https://scholarworks.umass.edu/designing_sustainable_landscapes/). Piping Plover was selected as an additional species to the originally selected 30 representative species as part of the Coastal Resiliency, Hurricane Sandy Project. The associated wildlife species that it represents are marine and estuarine beaches throughout the NA LCC. The Landscape Capability (LC) index integrates habitat capability and climate suitability into a single index that reflects the relative capacity of a site to support the species.