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North Atlantic LCC Demonstration Project: White Mountains to Moosehead Lake Initiative

North Atlantic LCC Demonstration Project: White Mountains to Moosehead Lake Initiative - Parcel Level Planning, Progress Through Tracking and Stakeholder Engagement to Advance Resilient Landscape Conservation

The purpose of this demonstration project was to show how North Atlantic LCC science products can be used to inform conservation for a Northeast habitat and resilience "hotspot." The Trust for Public Land will integrate LCC and other science products into a clearinghouse and analysis tool for parcel-level conservation planning in the 2.7 million acre White Mountains to Moosehead Lake region of Maine and New Hampshire.

The White Mountains to Moosehead Lake corridor covers 2.7 million acres from northern New Hampshire into western Maine.  This landscape is of unique interest for climate resilience due to its role in mega regional connectivity, its regionally unique geology, such as ultramafic settings, its great diversity of elevation, slope, and aspect, and its well-watered hydrology.  The focus area has been designed to maximize alignment with the Resilient Sites for Terrestrial Conservation dataset (Anderson et al., 2012) and with habitat for climate-sensitive species, such as Bicknell’s thrust and eastern brook trout. The corridor contains a wide diversity of public land ownerships, including federal ownerships through U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Department of Defense.  It also includes tribal lands, myriad state lands, and community owned lands.  Lastly, the region has significant private land under conservation easement. The Trust for Public Land is coordinating a coalition of more than twenty stakeholder organizations working collaboratively to conserve, restore, and appropriately manage this landscape.

Download a 2-page project overview.

Read the full proposal.

LCC Staff Contact: Steve Fuller

The work completed under this NALCC Demonstration Project was the development of a parcel level plan to prioritize tracts for conservation and other activities (e.g., development of ecological reserves on existing conservation land) based on their significance for climate resilience.  A range of data was used, including data funded with assistance from the NALCC.  The demonstration project also included an important new online progress tracking tool that is being used by The Trust for Public Land and its partner organizations.  This tracking tool, hosted on Databasin, allows all the partners to assess how each potential and completed project addresses priority metrics and the data associated with them.  For example, we are able to assess the number of priority acres within the Resilient Sites dataset that were protected within each conservation project.  We are also able to aggregate total accomplishments over different time horizons and track our overall rate of progress on each metric.  

This project made planning and prioritization available to stakeholders in two ways. The Trust for Public Land developed an online portal so that stakeholders can view the data, develop customized maps, and access datasets for download. Second, The Trust for Public Land held meetings for stakeholders, private landowners, and others who can play a role in utilizing this information for the development of projects, forest plans, and other relevant activities. 

This project is complete.

Quarterly Reports
2013 Jan-March Quarterly Report - White Mountains to Moosehead Lake
2013 April-June Quarterly Report - White Mountains to Moosehead Lake
2013 July-Sept Quarterly Report - White Mountains to Moosehead Lake
2013 Oct-Dec Quarterly Report (final) - White Mountains to Moosehead Lake

NALCC funding: $20,000

Trust for Public Land funding: $140,000

The Trust for Public Land maintains Measures of Progress webpage that tracks conserved acres as a proportion of the total goal.

The project team created and maintains a group on Data Basin, with 10 maps and 62 datasets available free of charge to stakeholders.

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