New Jersey Habitat Connectivity Project

Transcription

1 Mapping Core Team Meeting Two January 25 th, 10 am - noon Assunpink Wildlife Management Area, Main Office Meeting attendees: Patrick Carr, Margaret Conroy, Karl Figueiredo, Gretchen Fowles, Gylla MacGregor, Amy Miller, Kristin Munafo, Nick Procopio, Ron Smith, Lisa Stern, Dane Ward, Brian Zarate Agenda: Review of 12/17/2012 meeting and other core team meetings Guidance Doc Team At meeting 2, examples were supplied of other states (very road focused); tasks where each Guidance Doc team member will be contacting each of the states to see how they are implementing the HC plan and if a guidance doc, how are they using it and is it useful; brainstormed goals/objectives Communication team Team members researched states with habitat connectivity projects and at meeting 2, they reviewed materials put out by these other states to support habitat connectivity projects to get thinking about materials and tasks for the team; brainstormed team goals/objectives; task list getting categorized and prioritized; team members reviewing NJ working group habitat connectivity website to discuss at next meeting how can be improved Core team working structure, future meeting goals, and general project outline Core Team Structures The mapping, guidance document, and communiciation core teams will serve as advisory/review committee; Sub-teams (recruited at each meeting) will take on targeted task between meetings and then present back to main core team to discuss and determine next steps. As important decisions are made by the core teams, full working group meetings will be scheduled (approximately quarterly) to fill the full group on what each of the core teams has been working on and to get feedback. Note: not all full working group members are on a core team, so it is important to keep everyone in the loop. Longer term plan Draft goals and objectives of each of the core teams for next meeting (February). At meeting 3 (February) each team will finalize goals/objectives and provide to communication team who will put together a project goal this will be presented to full working group in March. Connectivity planning summary overview Reviewed general steps/decisions necessary to developing habitat connectivity mapping as presented in Beier, P, WD Spencer, R Baldwin, and B McRae Towards best practices for developing regional connectivity maps. Conservation Biology 25: Goal of map 2. Establish collaborations 3. Define region (state-wide; buffer out of state?)

2 4. Delineating natural landscape block 5. Protected areas? High ecological integrity? Habitat cores for species or suite of species? Linear barrier? What is a barrier? 6. Determine which blocks would benefit from connectivity? 7. How will you connect? 8. Lines between blocks? Drawn polygons? Modeled polygons algorithm to figure out corridors (least cost; graph theory; resistance surface)? Modeling species specific? Could use distribution modeling or expert opinion? How about topographic approach? 9. Guidance Review mapping approaches taken by other states A subteam reviewed approaches/goals of habitat connectivity analyses done by other states and presented those. It was clear that many different types of approaches have been taken. A more in-depth review of habitat connectivity efforts across the United States is being compiled by the Western Transportation Institute and partners and a draft should be available in another few weeks. Summary of sub-team findings: State/Region Approach Modeling Goal Process Ranking Arizona Ecoregional GIS (handdrawn hydrology) Tackle highest value/threat first Montana California Colorado Ecological Integrity Index (large scale); Focal species (small scale) Focal species (via workshops) Drew lines with conservation areas; then compared final map with GIS model for sanity check Kentucky Topographic/landscape Hand-drew corridors Maine Focal Species Interactive map with layers important for planning Transportation Identify and outreach to landowners For towns/county planning wanting people to use overlay if they have $$ to preserve and connect land Linkages characterized by habitat, land ownership, wildlife, threats, hydrology mapped conservation areas, narrowed 100 linkages down to 23; narrowed that down to 13 Obtained corridors along ridge, then mapped ownership and did outreach to preserve/connect Used specific habitat data, landcover data (similar to NJ landscape), buffered development (roads, urban) by ft Biological value/threat ranking

3 Massachusetts Ecological integrity Phase 1 focused on roads and ran scenario testing how much bang for the buck would you get; phase 2 will be mapping of corridors Montana Focal Species GIS New York Oregon Utah NH (intention) Focal Species (Hudson Valley area) Focal Species (but broad categories: amphibians, small mammals; large mammals). Time was an issue (hence focal species first) Barrier sensitive species approach Analysis GIS GIS corridor modeling Parcel map for landowners DOT planning Vermont Species approach GIS Local planning Washington Focal Species & expert opinion for habitat boards; DOT Combined species distribution modeling with connectivity modeling; incorporated climate modeling at three times (present, 2050, 2080) to show trend and future need Focused on roads; prioritized road corridor crossing Used landscape, roads, DEM, urbanization, riparian LULC data, core habitat layer, density/development Least cost modeling; used focal species and naturalness index approach separately and in combination so they do not have gaps (where one captures data and another does not) Weighted Landscape, riparian, slope, distance to road Weighted each layer

4 Discuss NJ mapping approach The group then began organizing the project outline beginning with the goals. Gretchen presented ENSP s vision: the idea was to tackle terrestrial first, then aquatic but we could include riparian layer in map overlay. A brief discussion took place regarding the need not to exclude riparian as that is an important corridor for a number of species (terrestrial and aquatic), particularly if we decide not to explicit map aquatic connectivity at first. FEMA money is becoming available for waterways, so don t want to miss that opportunity. Given opportunities/funding that currently exist for land acquisition, etc., perhaps we need to think about getting something simpler together in the near term, and then could get into greater detail in the longer term. Do we need to consider focal species is naturalness sufficient to capture species needs? Do we risk missing habitat specialists with a naturalness approach? Do we start with protected areas as base for core areas or expand beyond that protected areas make sense because you want to connect what you know will be there over the long term. Rutgers has a map of build out in 10 years. Use build out map to help identify corridors. We then considered what data is currently available: Are datalayers ready to go do we know the blocks that we want to conserve or connect? TNC has been working on a layer of preserved areas layer. Green Acres has state lands, directly funded county, municipial, nonprofit lands, recreational openspace inventory lands. There is a taskforce that is trying to build a comprehensive layer for protected lands in NJ. LULC data can be used to differentiate and rank habitat as it is an available and complete dataset protect the habitat you by default protect focal species? How will we capture renovation/restoration? Parcel data (for nearly all of the state) for internal use only Should we use focal species - and within that what species do we have data on? In looking at focal species we need to consider how to rank these. We could look at mode of dispersal to see who would be best as an umbrella species One of our first priorities should be to identify gross scale plot data on species to see how they overlap with protected areas then get down to fine scale where we know the core of the areas are and need to protect over long term and how do we get those areas connected. Habitat suitability between core areas is important a species may not reach the habitat in its lifetime but in generations. Concluded that it will help the team to see what we re starting with in terms of configuration/distribution of protected areas in NJ, urbanized areas, roads, etc. Plan to present at next meeting. Discuss NJ mapping goals/objectives We then identified goals of other states that would mirror what our goal of end product and use would be. For New Jersey, do we want the goal to be one statement (broad like reconnecting the landscape for terrestrial species statewide); specifically what are we trying to connect it for? Long distance, localized. Connect over the long term for longterm dispersals. Decision was for goal to be broad

5 Next steps: statement and then objectives will be more details spelling out that goal more explicitly. Goals and objectives will be something we ll continually refer back to as we make decisions about the approach to make sure we re meeting them. Doodle poll: for best next meeting date in February/early March. Please reply by 2/6. A sub-team will draft goal/objectives of NJ habitat connectivity mapping and present to core team at next meeting (Team: Margaret, Dane, Gretchen). Another sub-team will gather relevant GIS data layers to present at next meeting to help team start visualizing what approach might make sense in NJ. (Team: Gretchen recruiting)