ECOLOGICAL COMPOSITION AND CONDITION OF THE BOREAS PONDS TRACT Wildlife Conservation Society Adirondack Program Technical Paper No. 7 Michale J. Glennon April 2016 ECOLOGICAL COMPOSITION AND CONDITION OF THE BOREAS PONDS TRACT By Michale J. Glennon April 2016 iii ©Wildlife Conservation Society Suggested Citation Technical Paper Glennon, M.J. 2016. Ecological composition and condition of the Boreas Ponds Tract. Wildlife Conservation Society, Adirondack Program Technical Paper #7 Photo credit: Carl Heilman Wildlife Conservation Society Adirondack Program 132 Bloomingdale Ave Saranac Lake, NY 12983 (518) 891-8872 www.wcsnorthamerica.org [email protected] iv Acknowledgements This project was made possible through support provided by the Adirondack Council. I would also gratefully like to acknowledge the funders and creators of the many datasets I have made use of in the creation of this report. Among them, I very much appreciate the efforts of the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative, the Eastern Regional Science office of The Nature Conservancy, and the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project at the University of Massachusetts. Finally, I am very grateful for the support and insight of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Adirondack and North America Program staff and the extensive help from Adirondack Program director Zoë Smith in preparing this document. v Foreword New York State is poised to augment its Forest Preserve holdings with the transition of the Boreas Ponds tract to state ownership. The Boreas tract is a 20,578 acre parcel recently purchased in the town of North Hudson on the edge of the High Peaks wilderness. It is the last of a multi-year process of transition to New York State ownership of 69,000 acres of the former Finch Pruyn lands. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Adirondack Program conducted a scientific analysis of the ecological characteristics of the Boreas Pond tract to inform the upcoming state land classification decision to be undertaken by the Adirondack Park Agency and NYS Department of Environmental Conservation upon its transfer to the state. We offer this report to highlight a number of publicly available regional datasets, which provide unprecedented opportunities for amassing ecological information to provide objective, science-based information, demonstrate patterns, and guide important decisions in the region. The report demonstrates how this process could be applied to other land use decisions in the Adirondacks and across the North Atlantic region. We examined the extent and condition of the natural resources on the Boreas tract, the tract in the context of the adjacent High Peaks Management Unit, and its relative ecological value in comparison to existing state land units in the Adirondack Park. Our analysis made no consideration of intangible characteristics (social or psychological) that may influence the character of the land and the potential recreational opportunities that may be desired upon it. We considered only the ecological characteristics of the tract and their relative quality, as measured via the use of emerging datasets of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the Northeast. This analysis examined fine-scale ecological resources within the boundaries of the Boreas tract, and considered the parcel in the larger context of existing Forest Preserve lands in the Adirondacks. Our findings, based on the best available regional science, indicate that the Boreas tract contains significant and important ecological characteristics worthy of consideration in future decisions on its classification and management. Among them, the report illustrates that this tract scores high in terms of its resilience to climate change impacts, and its importance to local and regional scale ecological connectivity. We hope that this analysis can serve as a demonstration of the ways in which newly available, high quality, regional-scale public datasets can inform important management decisions in the Adirondacks and beyond. vi About The Author As the Science Director for WCS’s Adirondack Program, Dr. Michale Glennon serves a leading role in the ecological research conducted in the Adirondacks. Her research interests lie primarily at the intersection between land use management and ecological integrity, with a number of projects ranging from the impacts of low density, exurban development on wildlife to the potential changes to Adirondack lowland boreal communities resulting from climate change. Michale joined WCS in 2003 after completing a Ph.D. at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry where she explored the effects of land use management on bird and small mammal communities in the Adirondacks. She has also worked on the potential impacts of ski area development on Bicknell’s thrush, a Neotropical migrant of high conservation priority in the east, and on a project to understand the rapidly expanding moose population in the Adirondacks and its relatedness to nearby populations in neighboring states and provinces. In addition to her exurban development work, Michale is currently working to understand the potential impacts of recreation on wildlife communities. She serves on advisory committees for a number of organizations including for the Shingle Shanty Preserve and Research Station, the Adirondack Park Agency, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Adirondack All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative, and the Paul Smiths College Fisheries and Wildlife Science Program. Dr. Glennon is widely published and holds an adjunct faculty position at SUNY-ESF. She grew up in Lake Placid, NY, in the Adirondack Park, graduated from Lake Placid High School and lives in Ray Brook with her husband, Scott van Laer – a New York State Forest Ranger, children Phoebe and Clancy, one cat, two rabbits, 16 chickens, and three horses. vii Table of Contents Introduction 3 Purpose of this paper 3 Sources of data 3 Northeast Terrestrial Habitat Classification and Map 3 Northeast Aquatic Classification and Map 4 Northeast Lake and Pond Classification and Map 4 Resilient Sites for Terrestrial Conservation 4 Ecological Integrity 5 Forest Aboveground Biomass 5 Methodology 6 Results 7 Composition of the Boreas Tract 7 Terrestrial Habitats 7 Aquatic Habitats 11 Condition of the Boreas Tract 17 Forest Aboveground Biomass 17 Forest Loss and Gain 18 Resilience 19 Local Connectedness 20 Regional Flow 21 Ecological Integrity 22 A Note on Resilience vs Integrity 23 Wildlife Habitat 24 Potential Future Threats on the Boreas Tract 26 Habitat Loss 26 Climate Stress 28 Risks to Individual Species 28 The Boreas Tract in Context: What it Adds 30 Primary Habitats 30 High Quality Lands 31 The Boreas Tract in Context: How it Compares 35 Composition: Terrestrial Habitats, Geology, Patch Size, Forest Biomass 36 Condition: Resilience, Integrity, Connectedness, Regional Flow 38 Conclusions 41 Literature Cited 43 Introduction Page 1 List of Figures and Tables Figures Figure 1. Terrestrial habitats on the Boreas Tract 6 Figure 2. Terrestrial habitats on the Boreas Tract: macrogroup level 9 Figure 3. Aquatic habitats on the Boreas Tract 16 Figure 4. Forest aboveground biomass on the Boreas Tract (km/m2 x 10) 17 Figure 5. Forest loss on the Boreas Tract 2000 – 2012 18 Figure 6. Forest gain on the Boreas Tract 2000 – 2012 19 Figure 7. Terrestrial resilience on the Boreas Tract (90m resolution) 20 Figure 8. Local connectivity on the Boreas Tract (90m resolution) 21 Figure 9. Regional flow on the Boreas Tract (270m resolution) 22 Figure 10. Ecological integrity on the Boreas Tract (30m resolution) 23 Figure 11. Terrestrial resilience vs ecological integrity on the Boreas Tract 24 Figure 12. Landscape capability for Northeast representative species on the Boreas Tract 25 Figure 13. Modeled rare species habitat on the Boreas Tract 26 Figure 14. Future threats on the Boreas Tract: Habitat Loss 27 Figure 15. Future threats on the Boreas Tract: Human Footprint 28 Figure 16. Future threats on the Boreas Tract: Climate Stress 29 Figure 17. The Boreas Tract in context: proportional representation of primary habitats 31 Figure 18. The Boreas Tract in context: condition metrics 32 Figure 19. The Boreas Tract in context: terrestrial resilience 33 Figure 20. The Boreas Tract in context: ecological integrity 33 Figure 21. The Boreas Tract in context: local connectivity 34 Figure 22. The Boreas Tract in context: regional flow 34 Figure 23. The Boreas Tract in context: comparison to state lands by dominant habitats 36 Figure 24. Resilience overall and by unit, Boreas outlined in black 38 Figure 25. Local connectedness overall and by unit, Boreas outlined in black 39 Figure 26. Ecological integrity overall and by unit, Boreas outlined in black 39 Figure 27. Regional flow overall and by unit, Boreas outlined in black 40 Figure 28. Resilience, integrity, and connectivity values for existing units and the Boreas 42 Tables Table 1. Northeast terrestrial habitats on the Boreas tract: habitat level 10 Table 2. Northeast terrestrial habitats on the Boreas Tract: macrogroup level 11 Table 3. Northeast aquatic habitats on the Boreas Tract: flowing waters 12 Table 4. Northeast aquatic habitats on the Boreas Tract: lakes and ponds 12 Table 5. Descriptions of natural habitats on the Boreas Tract 12 Table 6. Proportions (%) of the High Peaks and Boreas tracts classified by degree of terrestrial resilience, ecological integrity, local connectedness, and regional