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Designing Sustainable Landscapes:

Generating Data on Ecological Integrity and Regional Connectivity

to Inform Strategic Land Conservation in the Northeastern U.S. 

​with Scott Jackson

Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 7pm on Zoom

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​Pre-registration is required. The suggested voluntary donation is $5, though any amount is welcome. To register, just click the link below.

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Register Here​​

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The Designing Sustainable Landscapes (DSL) program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has, for the past 15 years, been compiling spatial data for 13 states in the Northeastern U.S. and using it to assess ecological integrity and regional connectivity for the region’s ecosystems. Ecological integrity – defined as the long-term capability of an ecological community to sustain its composition, structure, and function over time – is calculated using a suite of stressor and resiliency metrics that are selected, weighted, and rescaled separately for each ecosystem that can be reasonably mapped in our region.

 

Likewise, regional connectivity is assessed separately for different ecosystems, but at a broader scale (forest, wetlands, ridgetop communities, and major river floodplains). Together, these two sources of landscape-scale data can be used, along with information about locally important resources, as foundational elements of a strategic land protection program. This presentation will describe the DSL methodology, models, and data products, let you know how to access those data, and introduce you to new web mapping and decision support tools to help you use these data for conservation action.

Scott Jackson is Extension Professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation at UMass Amherst, where he teaches courses and workshops on wildlife conservation and wetlands ecology, assessment, and conservation. His research interests include aquatic connectivity, wetland assessment and monitoring, impacts of roads and highways on wildlife and ecosystems, and landscape-based ecological assessment. With colleagues in the UMass Landscape Ecology Lab, he developed landscape assessment tools and approaches including the Conservation Assessment and Prioritization System (CAPS), Designing Sustainable Landscapes (DSL) and Critical Linkages. Jackson also coordinates the North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (NAACC), a network of practitioners in the 13-state North Atlantic region working to enhance river and stream connectivity.

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Miss a talk? Recordings are available on our Speaker Videos page and our YouTube channel.
 

Questions? Please contact Dan Morse at dan@rensselaerplateau.org.​​

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