Designing Sustainable Landscapes: Northeast terrestrial ecosystem cores

Northeast terrestrial ecosystem cores is one of the principal Designing Sustainable Landscapes (DSL) landscape conservation design (LCD) products, and it is best understood in the context of the full LCD process described in detail in the technical document on landscape design (McGarigal et al 2017). This particular product was developed for the Nature's Network project (www.naturesnetwork.org) — a collaborative partnership under the auspices of the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NALCC). Northeast terrestrial ecosystem cores represents a set of terrestrial core areas derived using only ecosystem-based criteria (i.e., no species-specific criteria) and scaled to identify the highest valued places by ecosystem and geophysical setting within the Northeast region (Fig. 1). These core areas are intended to complement the HUC6-scaled terrestrial core areas and connectors (see terrestrial core area network document, McGarigal et al 2017) that were derived as the primary ecological network. These regional ecosystem-based cores help identify the best places for each unique ecosystem and geophysical setting within the entire Northeast region, whereas the HUC6-based cores help identify the best places within each HUC6 to ensure a well-distributed core area network across the region. Both of these products are designed to provide strategic guidance for conserving natural areas, and the fish, wildlife, and other components of biodiversity that they support within the Northeast.