Lower New England – Northern Piedmont Ecoregional Conservation Plan; First Iteration Edited PREPARED BY Henry Barbour and the LNE/NP Ecoregional Planning Team January 2001 EDITED BY Conservation Science Support Northeast & Caribbean Division February 2003 This document may be cited as follows: Barbour, H., M.G. Anderson et al. 2003. Lower New England – Northern Piedmont Ecoregional Conservation Plan; First Iteration, Edited. The Nature Conservancy, Northeast & Caribbean Division, Boston, MA Ó 2003 The Nature Conservancy. All rights reserved. Executive Summary None written. Turn the page for Introduction and Acknowledgements. INCOMPLETE EXEC-1 TABLE OF CONTENTS COVER INTRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION TO THE ECOREGION PRIORITIES AND LEADERSHIP ASSIGNMENT PORTFOLIO SUMMARY SPECIES Planning Methods for Ecoregional Targets: Species Results for Species TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS AND COMMUNITIES Planning Methods for Ecoregional Targets: Terrestrial Ecosystems and Communities Results for Terrestrial Communities and Systems MATRIX-FORMING ECOSYSTEMS Planning Methods for Ecoregional Targets: Matrix-Forming Ecosystems Results for Matrix-Forming Ecosystems AQUATIC SYSTEMS AND NETWORKS Planning Methods for Ecoregional Targets: Freshwater Aquatic Ecosystems Aquatic Results Results for Aquatic Systems Classification Results Geographic framework for aquatic assessments Watershed classification: Aquatic ecological systems Reach level classification: Macrohabitats Classification: Discussion and Conclusion Condition Results GIS screening Expert interviews Condition: Discussion and Conclusion Portfolio Assembly Results Portfolio number and miles Representation goals Connectivity goals Threats across the portfolio Portfolio Assembly: Discussion and Conclusion THREATS ASSESSMENT OPPORTUNITIES, NEEDS, LESSONS, AND NEXT STEPS GLOSSARY LNE APPENDICES Appendix 1: Target Species List Appendix 2: Secondary Targets with Eos in Portfolio and 10-year Action Sites Appendix 3: Viable Community Occurrences Grouped by Subregion Appendix 4: Matrix Forest Associations within Tier 1 Preferred Sites Appendix 5: Ecological Land Unit Gap Analysis Summary Appendix 6: The Seven Major LNE-NP Ecological Drainage Units Appendix 7: Planning Teams BIBLIOGRAPHY Introduction Ecoregional Planning in the Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy’s mission is to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. The increasing rate of extinction in recent years has led to the realization that conserving rare and threatened species and natural communities per se is insufficient to effectively protect biodiversity. In broadening the scope of its work, the Conservancy has shifted towards protecting landscapes on an ecoregional scale. Planning by ecoregions, or areas that are unified in climate, topography, geology, and vegetation, is more sensible ecologically than planning within political boundaries such as states or provinces. Ecoregional planning methods improve on the traditional approach of protecting rare species and terrestrial communities by expanding to include common ecosystems that are representative of each ecoregion. Protection of good examples of these representative ecosystems can serve as a “coarse filter,” protecting a broad diversity of both common and rare species. The methods chapters in this report explain and elaborate on the concepts introduced here, especially as they relate to ecoregional planning in the Northeast and East. Two criteria for assessing conservation sites have become part of the new thinking - “functionality” and size. Functional sites are simply those in which ecological processes are sufficiently intact to sustain focal species and natural communities over the long term. Size is important because large, complex, multi-scale and relatively intact conservation areas – or landscapes - are likely to be the most efficient and effective at conserving biodiversity. These ideas have dovetailed with the developing need to identify examples of common, widespread natural community types as conservation targets in ecoregional portfolios, and have led to the inclusion of matrix-forming communities (especially forest communities in the Eastern U.S.) as a landscape-scale conservation target in ecoregional plans. Ecoregional plans that address both the rare and the common, at the species, community, and landscape or watershed levels, will guide the Conservancy’s actions for years to come. Using all available data on the distribution of ecosystems, communities, and species, Conservancy teams and our partners are working to design networks of conservation areas within each ecoregion. Ecoregional plans identify a set of portfolio sites, or areas that need to be protected in order to conserve the native biodiversity of the region into the future. The plan is a product of a collective initiative between many people and organizations who participated in the project as partners, experts and advisors. Members of this cooperative effort generally include Conservancy staff, Natural Heritage Program scientists, university professionals, state and federal agencies, other conservation organizations, and local experts. Conservation sites that make up the portfolio generally range from small (several acres) to very large (tens of thousands of acres) sites. Local Conservancy units chose a subset of these sites, their ten-year action sites, where they will focus conservation activity in the next ten years. For these areas, the Conservancy will develop detailed Conservation Area 3/2003 INTRO-1 Plans which will spell out the specific actions needed to protect the site’s biological integrity. Conservation Goals Our overarching goal is to maintain the long-term viability of all native plant and animal species and examples of all natural communities across their natural ranges of occurrence and variation within the ecoregion while maintaining the natural processes critical to ensuring long-term ecological integrity. Specifically, the conservation objectives adopted by the planning team were: To ensure the continued existence of the matrix communities found in the ecoregion and restore the natural processes, including succession, to promote the development of mature (old growth) stands; To protect multiple viable examples of all the region’s natural communities through the development of a portfolio of conservation areas. The examples should represent the range of variability found within each of the communities in the ecoregion; To incorporate into the portfolio viable examples of all declining, disjunct, or otherwise vulnerable species, with the goal of protecting multiple viable populations of each species in the variety of habitats and ecoregional contexts in which it naturally occurs. To protect the full array of aquatic systems found within the ecoregion. This Ecoregional Plan Report This report includes the results of the first iteration assessment of the Lower New England — Northern Piedmont ecoregion, last revised in January 2001. The report has been reorganized to include methods chapters developed in 2003 as part of a standard template for ecoregional plans in the Northeast. In addition, full methods and results of the LNE aquatics analyses are presented here for the first time. Note that the methods chapters are meant to be relatively independent of one another, and so occasionally repeat some concepts or definitions. Following a general description of the ecoregion are several chapters that describe methods and results for various ecoregional targets: · Focal species · Terrestrial ecosystems and patch communities · Matrix-forming ecosystems · Aquatic systems 3/2003 INTRO-2 Acknowledgements Edited Version and Plan Template Conservation Science Support (CSS), formerly known as Eastern Conservation Science (ECS) and located at the Eastern Resource Office (ERO, formerly the Eastern Regional Office) in Boston, is responsible for this product. Most of the ecoregional plan documents refer to ECS. CSS provides leadership for science-based ecoregional and landscape-scale planning and design; geospatial and statistical terrestrial and aquatic analysis; data dissemination and training; and other specialized professional services to the Northeast and Caribbean Division of The Nature Conservancy. At the time of publication, CSS staff included: Mark Anderson, Director of Conservation Science; Shyama Khanna, Information and Project Coordinator; Greg Kehm, Spatial Ecologist and Lab Manager; Arlene Olivero, Aquatic Ecologist; Charles Ferree, Landscape Ecologist; Dan Morse, GIS Analyst; and Susan Bernstein, Communications Consultant. Methodologies The standard methodologies sections created for this and all Northeast ecoregional assessment reports were adapted from material originally written by team leaders and other scientists and analysts who served on ecoregional planning teams in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. The sections have been reviewed by several planners and scientists within the Conservancy. Team leaders included Mark Anderson, Henry Barbour, Andrew Beers, Steve Buttrick, Sara Davison, Jarel Hilton, Doug Samson, Elizabeth Thompson, Jim Thorne, and Robert Zaremba. Arlene Olivero was the primary author of freshwater aquatic methods. Mark Anderson substantially wrote or reworked all other methodologies sections. Susan Bernstein edited and compiled all sections. LNE/NP Planning Team and Working Groups We assembled a Core Team made up of the Conservancy