Elevation
U.S. Geological Survey. 2002-2008.National Elevation Dataset (NED) 30m. Sioux Falls, SD http://ned.usgs.gov/
Gesch, D.B., 2007, The National Elevation Dataset, in Maune, D., ed., Digital Elevation Model Technologies and Applications: The DEM Users Manual, 2nd Edition: Bethesda, Maryland, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, p. 99-118.
Gesch, D., Oimoen, M., Greenlee, S., Nelson, C., Steuck, M., and Tyler, D., 2002, The National Elevation Dataset: Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, v. 68, no. 1, p. 5-11.
Regionally Significant Species of Greatest Conservation Need
A. NatureServe 2011 NatureServe Central Databases. Arlington, Virginia. U.S.A. Precise locational (Element Occurrence) data polygons for all species in the following states:
Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and West Virginia. Data Source: NatureServe (www.natureserve.org ) and its Natural Heritage member programs. NatureServe and its Natural Heritage member programs have developed a Multi-Jurisdictional Dataset (MJD). The creation of the MJD is aimed at improving conservation planning and actions by providing access to a
comprehensive dataset of U.S. and Canadian species and ecological communities. These data are dependent on the research and observations of many scientists and institutions, and reflect our current state of knowledge. Many areas have never been thoroughly surveyed, however, and the absence of data in any particular geographic area does not necessarily mean that species or ecological
communities of concern are not present. The data was exported from NatureServe 2/2011.
B. Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program, Pittsburg, PA. U.S.A. The Pennsylvania Natural
Heritage Program (PNHP) is a partnership of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program (PNHP) provided The Nature Conservancy (TNC) with GIS shapefiles and tabular data for Element Occurrences for non-Federally listed tracked birds, mammals, terrestrial invertebrates, plants, and natural communities contained in the PNHP database for the entire state of Pennsylvania. For amphibians, reptiles, fish, aquatic invertebrates (e.g., mussels, odonates) and species listed under the US Endangered Species Act, PNHP was only able to provide Environmental Review polygons. The data was exported from the Pennsylvania Natural Herigate Program 2/2011.
C. Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program. Westborough,
Massachusetts. U.S.A. The Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program is part of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. The Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program provided The Nature Conservancy with GIS shapefiles and tabular data for all Element Occurrences contained in the NHESP database for species and natural communities
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III
Resilient Sites for Species Conservation in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Region 115 within the state. The data was exported from the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program 1/2011.
D. Delaware Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program. Smyrna, Delaware. U.S.A. The Delaware Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program is part of the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife. The Delaware Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program provided The Nature Conservancy with GIS shapefiles and tabular data for all Element Occurrences contained in the NHESP database for species and natural communities within the state. The data was exported from the Delaware Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program 2005.
How did we consistently map species occurrences and do the hexagon overlay? All source species occurrence datasets were converted to point features if they were not already in point format for this intersection. Centroids were created by The Nature Conservancy from the following sources using the XTools extension (ver. 6.0) for ArcGIS:
Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program Element Occurrence Record Source polygons
Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program Element Occurrence Record Source lines
NatureServe Multi-Jurisdictional Dataset polygons
Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program Environmental Review polygons These were combined with data already in point format from:
Delaware Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program Element Occurrence Record
Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program Element Occurrence Record source points
Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program Element Occurrence Record point representations of polygon records
The following types of centroids were classified as precise enough for the overlay with 1000 acre hexagons:
1) The NatureServe MJD most precise available polygon occurrences where the representational accuracy was listed as very high, high, or medium.
2) The NatureServe MJD most precise available polygon occurrences where the representational accuracy was listed as unknown or blank but the polygon was < 125 acres in size, the minimum size allowable for a procedural feature to be classified as of medium representational accuracy 3) All occurrences obtained from Massachusetts Natural Heritage Program
4) All occurrences obtained from Delaware Natural Heritage Program
5) Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program Element Occurrence Records for non-Federally listed tracked birds, mammals, terrestrial invertebrates, plants, and natural communities
The following types of occurrences were classified as not precise enough for the centroid overlay with 1000 acre hexagons:
1. The NatureServe MJD most precise available polygon occurrences where the representational accuracy was listed as low or very low
2. The NatureServe MJD most precise available polygon occurrences where the representational accuracy was listed as unknown or blank and the polygon was >= 125 acres in size
3. Pennsylvania amphibians, reptiles, fish, aquatic invertebrates (e.g., mussels, odonates) and species listed under the US Endangered Species Act for which PNHP could only provide Environmental Review polygons.
Roads and Railroads
Roads: Tele Atlas North America, Inc., 2009. U.S. and Canada Streets Cartographic. 1:100,000 Tele Atlas StreetMap Premium v. 7.2 ESRI® Data & Maps: StreetMap. 2009 Data Update:
North America. Redlands, California, USA. U.S. and Canada Streets Cartographic represents
streets, highways, interstate highways, roads with and without limited access, secondary and connecting roads, local and rural roads, roads with special characteristics, access ramps, and ferries within the United States and Canada.
Railroads: Tele Atlas North America, Inc. 2009. U.S. and Canada Railroads. 1:100,000. ESRI®
Data & Maps: StreetMap. 2009 Data Update: North America. Redlands, California, USA.
U.S. and Canada Railroads represent the railroads of the United States and Canada.
How did we create Road/Railroad Density? We calculated a wall-to-wall dataset of the road and railroad density (meters/hectare) within a 1,000 meter radius of each 30m pixel for the New England and Mid-Atlantic States. We compiled roads from the following sources: 1) Roads: Tele Atlas North America, Inc., 2009. U.S. and Canada Streets Cartographic. 1:100,000 Tele Atlas StreetMap Premium v. 7.2 ESRI® Data & Maps: StreetMap. 2009 Data Update: North America.
Redlands, California, USA. U.S. 2) Railroads: Tele Atlas North America, Inc. 2009. U.S. and Canada Railroads. 1:100,000. ESRI® Data & Maps: StreetMap. 2009 Data Update: North
America. Redlands, California, USA. From this dataset we excluded 4-wheel drive trails, walking trails, and ferry lines because these features were not consistently mapped across states. Using the remaining class 1-8 roads and all railroads, we calculated the density of line features using the ESRI ArcGIS 9.3 Workstation GRID command LINEDENSITY (<lines>, {item}, {cellsize},
<SIMPLE | KERNEL>,{unit_scale_factor}, {radius}) with the parameters linedensity (mrg_rd18rr.shp, none, 30, simple, 10000, 1000). We had to divide the region into 8 tiles for analysis and create integer outputs due to the large file sizes involved. Each of the 8 tile areas was also buffered out by 10km prior to running through the linedensity command to make sure the border section of each tile was accurately calculated. These 10km buffer area results were then clipped off before combining the 8 tiles into a resultant regional dataset. The final dataset was also clipped to the state boundaries.
Land Cover
U.S. Geological Survey. 2011. National Land Cover Dataset 2006. Sioux Falls, SD http://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd2006_downloads.php
NLCD 2006 quantifies land cover and land cover change between the years 2001 to 2006 and provides an updated version of NLCD 2001. These products represent the first time this type of 30-meter cell land cover change has been produced for the conterminous United States. Products were generated by
comparing spectral characteristics of Landsat imagery between 2001 and 2006, on an individual path/row basis, using protocols to identify and label change based on the trajectory from NLCD 2001 products. A formal accuracy assessment of the NLCD 2006 land cover change product is planned for 2011.
NLCD 2006 Product Descriptions:
NLCD 2006 Land Cover - An updated circa 2006 land cover layer (raster) for the conterminous United States for all pixels. The resultant product for the northeast distinguishes 15 land cover classes: Open Water, Developed Open Space, Developed Low Intensity, Developed Medium Intensity, Developed High Intensity, Barren Land (Rock/Sand/Clay), Deciduous Forest, Evergreen Forest, Mixed Forest, Shrub/Scrub, Grassland/Herbaceous, Pasture/Hay, Cultivated Crops, Woody Wetlands, and Emergent Herbaceous Wetlands.
NLCD 2006 Land Cover Change – A land cover layer (raster) containing only those pixels identified as changed between NLCD 2001 Land Cover Version 2.0 and NLCD 2006 Land Cover products for the conterminous United States.
NLCD 2006 Percent Developed Imperviousness - An updated circa 2006 continuous imperviousness estimate layer (raster) for the conterminous United States for all pixels. The impervious surface data classifies each 30m pixel into 101 possible values (0% - 100%).
NLCD 2001/2006 Percent Developed Imperviousness Change – A raster layer containing the difference of those imperviousness values that changed between NLCD 2001 Percent Developed Imperviousness Version 2.0 and NLCD 2006 Percent Developed Imperviousness.
Resilient Sites for Species Conservation in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Region 117 Stream Barriers: Dams and Waterfalls
1. Dams. The Nature Conservancy. 2011. Northeast Regional Dam Dataset Version 3/1/2011.
The Nature Conservancy Eastern Conservation Science Office. Boston, MA. This dataset represents the result of a project to compile a dataset of dam barriers in the northeast states (ME, NH, VT, MA, CT, RI, NY, PA, NJ, DE, MD, VA, WV, DC) and spatially link the dams to the correct stream flowline in the USGS National Hydrography Plus (NHD-Plus) 1:100,000 stream dataset. A standardized, repeatable, feasible, and most accurate dam snapping method was developed and implemented to create this dataset. Primary steps included 1) snapping each state's dams to the 1:100,000 NHD flowlines, using a 100m snapping tolerance, 2) coding the dams for prioritization for manual review, 3) manual error checking of the prioritized dams, 4) returning the data to the states for expert review, and 5) re-incorporated the state edits into the final snapped dataset. Detailed data sources include
CT: Connecticut DEP, Inland Water Resources Div. Publication date 1996. Retrieved April 2009.
DE: Delaware Dams: DNREC; 2007
MA: MA Division of Ecological Restoration April 2009
MD: MD Department of Natural Resources 2/12/2007, publication date 2009
ME: Army Corp of Engineers (USACE), Maine Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MEDEP)(comp., ed.), Maine Office of Geographic Information Systems (comp., ed.). Publication date 2006
NH: NH Department of Environmental Services 4/2009
NJ: NJDEP - Bureau of Dam Safety and Flood Control Publication Date: 2001
NY: NYS Department of Environmental Conservation 2007; USGS Great Lakes Science Center Retrieved 4/15/2009
PA: Division of Dam Safety, Department of Environmental Protection 01/28/2010; PA Fish and Boat Commission Retrieved 7/20/2009
RI: RI Department of Environmental Management 6/2009
VA: VA Dept. of Game & Inland Fisheries 6/2009
VT: Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, Department of Environmental Conservation 4/2009 & 11/2009
WV: WV DNR: Wildlife Diversity and Technical Support Units 9/2009; WV Non-coal dams 6/2002, DMR Dams 6/2009, NID dams 10/2000: WV State GIS Data Clearinghouse:
http://wvgis.wvu.edu/data/data.php
US Army Corps' National Inventory of Dams Retrieved 4/29/2008
USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) 1/2009
2. Waterfall: U.S. Geological Survey. 2009. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) 1.2009. http://nhd.usgs.gov/gnis.html Waterfall features were extracted from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) system. The GNIS was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, and contains information about physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and associated areas, both current and historical. The database holds the Federally recognized name of each feature and defines the location of the feature by state, county, USGS topographic map, and geographic coordinates.
How did we create funcationally connected stream networks between dams? Functionally connected stream networks were calculated in a GIS using the Barrier Analysis Tool (BAT), a custom ArcGIS 9.3 toolbar that was developed for The Nature Conservancy by Duncan Hornby of the GeoData Institute at
the University of Southampton, England. Inputs for the BAT include a single-flowline drendritic hydrography network and point locations representing barriers.
A single flowline network was developed from the USGS National Hydrography Plus (NHD-Plus) 1:100,000 scale hydrography for all streams with drainage areas >1 sq.mi. through a series of attribute queries and manual edits. This network was run through the BAT which produced a list of outstanding errors. These errors included loops created from digitizing errors in the NHDPlus (e.g. streams that cross ridgelines thus connecting two networks) as well as other special circumstances (e.g. canals which cut across the natural topography thereby creating loops). Manual editing was done to fix these segments and terminated when the BAT no longer produced error lists.
Dam location points were “snapped” to the hydrography network. Topological concurrence between the point locations and the hydrography lines was necessary for the subsequent analysis in BAT. Dams within 100m of the hydrography were snapped using the free ArcGIS Hawth’s tools. After dams were snapped, several error checks were run. These include reviewing: 1) that river names match in dam dataset and stream dataset 2) large dams that snapped to small streams 3) all dams on larger rivers 4) all large dams.
These error checking fields were used to prioritize dams for manual review. After TNC performed internal manual review, snapped dam data was returned to the state contacts who had provided the data or other regional experts for their review.
The snapped dams and edited hydrography were entered into the BAT which used the dams to “fracture”
the network, thus creating connected networks bounded by dams, waterfalls, or the topmost headwater node.
Example of functionally connected stream networks. Each network is bounded by dams and/or the topmost extent of headwater streams. Showing a unique color for each connected network