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 site groups for northern New England (MLRA 143) 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.