Case Study: Classifying Northern New England Landscapes for Improved Conservation

Abstract

On the Ground • Ecological land classification enables improved conservation by linking land types to vegetation, ecosystem services, disturbance regimes, and conservation practices. • Defining landscape-scale ecological site groups allows for the development of generalized state-and-transition models for summarizing the major ecological dynamics and associated conservation practices within a region. • We defined nine ecological sitegroups for northern New England(MLRA143) by identifying the fewest number of ecological classes as possible while retaining maximum utility of state-and-transition models for each class. • Ecological site groups provide scalability of ecological site information and simplify the development of ecological concepts and the application of appropriate conservation practices.