Upper Saco Valley Land Trust Resource Inventory Dan Sperduto & Peter Ellis Sperduto Ecological Services LLC Ellis Ecological Services LLC May 2011 Submitted to the Upper Saco Valley Land Trust Sperduto Ecological Services LLC 359 Baptist Road Canterbury NH 03224 [email protected] Ellis Ecological Services LLC Mt. Rainier, MD [email protected] Cover Photo: Top: Saco River in Conway, with River Channel and Floodplain Forests. Bottom: Pitch Pine (Pinus rigida) at the top of Jockey Cap, a Rocky Ridge in Fryeburg, Maine, with Lovewell Pond in the background. Above: Silver Lake, Jackman Ridge (light green foreground), and surrounding Pitch/Mixed Pine Plains between Silver and Ossipee Lakes (darker surrounding area ). This illustrates the effects of soils on tree composition: hardwoods dominate on fine glacial till soils on Jackman Ridge whereas pine trees dominate on the coarse, sandy outwash soils elsewhere. The former are productive hardwood soils, whereas the latter are productive softwood soils. All photos © Dan Sperduto (or Dan Sperduto for NH Natural Heritage Bureau). 2 Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Executive Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 6 1.Methods ..................................................................................................................................................... 7 1.1 Natural Community & Wildlife Habitat Model ................................................................................... 7 Map Units .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Derivation: Inputs & Interpretation of Layers ...................................................................................... 9 1.2 Co-occurrence Analysis and Resource Data Model .......................................................................... 14 Selected Input layers and Their Scoring Schemes .............................................................................. 14 Scoring Adjustments Based on Ecological Integrity Analysis .............................................................. 21 1.3 Focus Areas ....................................................................................................................................... 30 Approach to delineation ..................................................................................................................... 31 2.Results ...................................................................................................................................................... 34 2.1 Ecological Overview of Service Area ................................................................................................. 34 Setting ................................................................................................................................................. 34 Ecological Diversity ............................................................................................................................. 35 2.2 Natural Communities & Wildlife Habitats......................................................................................... 37 Definition ............................................................................................................................................ 37 Descriptions ........................................................................................................................................ 37 2.3 Other Resource Data Model Input Layer Maps ................................................................................ 69 2.4 Focus Areas ....................................................................................................................................... 75 References ................................................................................................................................................ 101 Appendices ................................................................................................................................................ 102 Appendix 1: New Hampshire- Maine Natural Community Cross-Reference ........................................ 103 Appendix 2: Maps ................................................................................................................................. 111 Appendix 3: Acreage and Conservation Land Status for Input Layer Features in Draft Focus Areas ... 112 3 Acknowledgements Special thanks to the Upper Saco Valley Land Trust Resource Inventory Committee for their guidance and input throughout this Phase I of the Resource Inventory: Larry Garland, Tom Gross, Wink Lees, Tom Earle, and Jess Charpentier. Thanks also to Tony Federer, Dave Publicover, and Brian Fowler, who provided helpful technical input at meetings with the Resource Inventory Committee. Thanks to the Board of Directors, as well as Kori Marchowsky for their support and feedback at early meetings. Many thanks to the long list of data providers and staff employees at those organizations: New Hampshire GRANIT; the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS; Maine and New Hampshire offices); Maine GIS Data Catalog, Larry Garland and the Appalachian Mountain Club, the New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau (NHNHB), the Maine Natural Areas Program (MENAP; including Lisa St. Hiliare and Andy Cutko), the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MEDIFW), New Hampshire Fish and Game Department (NHF&G), the Nature Conservancy, and the New Hampshire Audubon Society. Bill Leak (USDA Forest Service) and Joe Homer (NRCS) provided additional information on soils, and Jeff Lougee at TNC shared local maps of natural communities. Finally, we extend many thanks to the Upper Saco Valley Land Trust and an anonymous donor for funding this project. Executive Summary The Resource Inventory presented in this report is Phase I of a Strategic Conservation Planning effort by the Upper Saco Valley Land Trust (USVLT). Future phases will build on the foundation of the Resource Inventory by soliciting input and engagement from local conservation partners and stakeholders, considering additional resource values not explicitly incorporated into the Resource Inventory, and prioritizing among conservation opportunities. The mission of USVLT is to preserve the ecological systems and cultural values of the Upper Saco River Valley, including the continued well-being and availability of land for farming, forestry, recreation, education, as well as land remaining in its natural state for the benefit of natural and human communities. The main goals of the Resource Inventory were to consolidate geographic information on the natural and cultural features of the landscape, and identify areas that contain critical or high resource values. We began by combining separate Geographic Information System (GIS) data layers from the respective states to obtain a set of seamless GIS maps covering the entire service area for each particular feature pertinent to the USVLT mission. Differences in data availability, coverage, or content limited the number of resources that could be incorporated into the analysis during Phase I. Ultimately, we included twelve layers in the subsequent analyses (alphabetical order): Aquifers; Brook Trout Headwaters; Farmland and Other Openings; Great Pond Shorelines; Important Bird Areas; Natural Communities and Wildlife Habitats; Open Wetlands; Prime Farmland Soils; Productive Forest Soils; Riparian Zones; Rare Plants, Animals, and Exemplary Natural Communities; and Unfragmented Forest Blocks. The USVLT Resource 4 Inventory Committee was instrumental in selecting and assigning score values to features within each of these layers relevant to the USVLT mission. Eleven of these layers were based on or interpolated from existing data layers. The Natural Community and Wildlife Habitat map is a novel data layer derived during this project through an analysis and interpretation of nine data sources. This map allowed us to distill and integrate key physical and biological attributes of the landscape from many independent sources into a single GIS layer. In so doing, we avoided some potential redundancy, coverage gaps, and methodological differences among data layers if they had been used individually. Natural communities and wildlife habitats can be interpreted and compared on the basis of factors such as rarity, geographic distribution, biological importance, and the ecological integrity or health of individual examples at multiple geographic scales (global, state, and local). These attributes were useful in assigning values in the second stage of the Resource Inventory. The next stage involved constructing a Resource Data Model (RDM) to identify areas where many features of value co-occur in the landscape, or occur in close proximity. The “co-occurrence” analysis involves assigning numerical scores to features within each of the twelve resource layers and overlaying and summing the feature scores to obtain a single map depicting areas of high to low score values. For example, a high score would result where multiple features of conservation interest