Northeast Habitat Guides Completed for Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies

Regionally consistent mapping is a critical foundation for regional conservation planning.  Over the last five years, the Regional Conservation Needs (RCN) program of the Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies has supported the classification and mapping of terrestrial and aquatic habitat types for the Northeast Region with NatureServe and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).  The North Atlantic LCC has provided additional support to refine both the terrestrial and aquatic habitat maps and to extend the mapping into adjacent areas of Canada. The Nature Conservancy recently released the RCN-funded report “Northeast Habitat Guides: A companion to the terrestrial and aquatic habitat maps.”  The document contains 109 two-page fact sheets, one for each habitat, plus sections on classification, mapping, and sources of information. The goal of this project was to ensure the understanding and widespread use of the Northeast Aquatic Habitat classification system by creating a printable web-based guide to the Northeast Aquatic Habitat Classification and GIS database. The guide includes: descriptions of the habitat types, example photographs, statistics and distribution patterns,  guidance to using crosswalks to other (state) classification schemes, and associations to wildlife, fish and mussels.

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