Webinar: Vernal Pool Data Cooperative

The North Atlantic Vernal Pool Data Cooperative: A Regional Framework to Advance Conservation Planning

Vernal pools provide critical habitat for a variety of wildlife, including pool-breeding amphibians, turtles, and invertebrates.  However, their ephemeral hydrology and small size have made it challenging to map vernal pool occurrence on the landscape.  As a result, only three states in the North Atlantic region (MA, NJ, VT) have attempted to systematically map vernal pools within their boundaries, while information on vernal pool distribution in other states are scattered among non-governmental organizations, universities, state agencies, municipalities, and others.  The Vernal Pool Data Cooperative (VPDC) has compiled much of this disparate information into a single, region-wide GIS database consisting of ~60,000 vernal pool records from eight states and two Canadian provinces.  

The VPDC is now available on the North Atlantic LCC's Conservation Planning Atlas as two separate datasets (Level 1 and Level 2) depending on the restriction category assigned by the original data owner. This presentation will introduce the VPDC as a framework for geospatial vernal pool data, demonstrate the visualization capabilities on the Conservation Planning Atlas, and discuss how it will help advance vernal pool conservation on a landscape scale, and highlight data gaps where additional vernal pool mapping is needed.

The webinar will be co-led by Steve Faccio, a conservation biologist and co-founder of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, and Sean MacFaden, a research analyst at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. 

To join the meeting online

Link to WebEx

Meeting number: 746 574 509

Meeting password: Vernal-Pools-101

To join the meeting by phone 

Toll-free number: 1-866-832-8172

Attendee access code: 495 184 7