Local Connectedness Stratified by Setting and Ecoregion, Northern Appalachians

Resilience concerns the ability of a living system to adjust to climate change, to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with consequences; in short, its capacity to adapt. In this project we aim to identify the most resilient examples of key geophysical settings (e.g. sand plains, granite mountains, limestone valleys, etc.) to provide conservationists with a nuanced picture of the places where conservation is most likely to succeed over centuries. The project had three parts: 1) identifying and mapping the geophysical settings, 2) developing a quantitative estimate of resilience for each setting based on landscape complexity and permeability, and 3) identifying key linkages that may be important in facilitating climate-induced regional movements. The final products include the identification of sites with high or low estimated resilience and overlays of these sites with the TNC portfolio of important biodiversity sites. The products were presented in an ecoregional context, highlighting sites with the highest estimated resilience for each setting within each ecoregion.
 

Local Connectedness estimates the degree of connectedness of a cell with its surroundings within a three km radius.

The method used to map local connectedness for the region was resistant kernel analysis, developed and run by Brad Compton using software developed by the UMASS CAPS program (umasscaps.org). The theoretical spread of a species or process outward from a focal cell is a function of the resistance values of the neighboring cells and their distance from the focal cell out to a maximum distance of three kilometers.