Salinity, Northeast U.S.

The presence of salt water is an important determinant of ecological communities. This dataset modifies the Northeast Terrestrial Habitat Map developed by The Nature Conservancy to denote the presence of salt water or brackish water as follows: -Wetlands and waters classified by the National Wetland Inventory (http://www.fws.gov/wetlands/) as "marine", plus additional ocean waters to a distance from the coast of 10 km, are considered salt water and assigned a value of "1" -Wetlands and waters classified by the National Wetland Inventory as "upper estuarine" are considered oligohaline and assigned a value of "0.5" -Wetlands and waters classified by the National Wetland Inventory as "estuarine" are considered brackish and assigned a value of "0.7" -All other areas, both terrestrial and aquatic, are assigned a value of "0"