Projects

This site describes conservation science projects sponsored by the North Atlantic LCC and other partners that contribute regional-scale scientific information to aid decision makers who are working to sustain natural and cultural resources.

These projects collectively build toward the information, tools and capacity needed to make more informed conservation decisions in the North Atlantic region. Projects fall in one or more of the following three categories:

• Projects that develop foundational information providing the basis for assessing condition of and threats to priority resources. These include building blocks for future science and tools (e.g., consistent classification, mapping, and compilations and databases of existing information)
• Assessments of condition, major threats and vulnerabilities to natural or cultural resources, including assessments of:

• Human impacts including land use change (e.g. urban growth, roads, sprawl), energy development (e.g., fossil fuels, hydropower, wind development, biomass development, and transmission corridors), changes in hydrology, invasive species, and contaminants
• Climate impacts including sea level rise, impacts from changing temperature and precipitation (including floods and droughts), shifts/changes/loss of natural communities; and changes in invasive species distribution

• Decision support tools including conservation designs. Decision support tools use the foundational information and assessments to help partners decide how much of what conservation actions are needed where to sustain these resources under both current and projected future conditions. They include:

• Tools that can inform conservation decision-making based on current and future conditions (e.g., spatial tools that identify priority areas for protection, management, or restoration to achieve user-defined conservation objectives)
• Conservation designs that show where we should focus efforts for sustaining resources, including connected networks of core areas