Evaluation of Landscape Components in a Regional Conservation Network



Hugh Irwin

Abstract

The southern Appalachian region is an area of high biological diversity.  The Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition (SAFC) has proposed a regional network of landscape scale conservation areas to assure long term protection and recovery of species and ecosystem functions. However, these landscape areas vary in their intactness and current ecosystem functioning. This study demonstrates  a methodology for evaluating intactness and ecosystem functioning of conservation  areas using GIS analysis and modeling that can guide the development of protection  and restoration plans. The connectivity between landscape conservation areas  is also evaluated to identify priority areas between conservation areas to add to the protection plan.

The Southern Appalachians

Southern Appalachian Region

The Southern Appalachian region encompasses more than 70 million acres in the mountainous portion of eight states from Alabama to Virginia. The region has been drawn historically in many ways. We have used a combination of ecoregion divisions and watershed boundaries to delineate  the extent of the region.


    

Overview: A Vision for Lasting Protection in the  Southern Appalachians
    
             
Unicoi Misty Landscape
    
    

The Southern Appalachian mountains support one of the most biologically diverse temperate forests in the world. At least 3,000 species of plants, including some 150 tree species, are native to the region. Along with a wealth of plants, with origins both tropical and boreal, our region is a center of diversity and evolution for salamanders species. The broader southeast region is home to a vast number of fish, mussels, snails, and crayfish that make it world renowned for its aquatic diversity. Much of this aquatic diversity occurs in streams or rivers of the southern Appalachians or depends on waters flowing out of its mountains.

  The Southern Appalachian region also hosts the most consolidated ownership  of public lands in the eastern United States. In the region at large more  than 5.5 million acres are in national forest ownership, along with another  0.9 million as national park and national recreation area ownership. Significant  amounts of land are also under various state, federal, and other conservation  ownership. Some lands are permanently protected through wilderness designation  or management; substantial roadless areas and lands with low road density  also remain in the region. These remnants of the natural landscape, coupled  with other lands already managed for conservation, can form the foundation  for the long-term recovery and protection of the region’s natural wealth.


At a glance, the natural areas of the southern Appalachians appear as healthy and vast as they are biologically rich and unique. Yet the truth beneath the forest canopy is that the region’s conservation future is extremely vulnerable. Today, more than 50 species of plant and animal are federally listed as endangered or threatened with extinction. Many more species are in decline and face an uncertain future. Exotic species, habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, and air pollution raise the specter of continuing loss of species and diversity. Key species and species groups, such as native predators, are entirely missing, with inadequate habitat and prey for successful recovery at present.

While some natural areas are protected through legislation or strict management practices, they are generally small and isolated from each other. In a region that hosts plant and animal diversity of global significance, these islands of nature are necessary but not sufficient to provide a connected network of natural areas that will protect ecological processes and native species into the future. Additional areas should be added to secure intact ecological units. Intact ecosystems host critical ecological processes that provide an array of benefits including air and water purification, nutrient recycling, soil renewal and climatic stability. They are essential to the continued viability of plants and animals, and by consequence to our own way of life, whether we live in suburban Atlanta, GA, or rural Damascus, VA.

In parts of the Southeast, urban expansion ranks among the most aggressive in the United States. Increasing development is of special concern in a region where close to 50 percent of the national population already lives within a day’s drive. The alteration of natural habitats owing to human encroachment threatens the quality of the air, land and water upon which all of us depend. The time is ripe for a comprehensive vision for the protection and restoration of this invaluable refuge.

The Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition (SAFC) advocates a new way of understanding the region that employs both regional and landscape-scale analysis and planning. First of all, regional analysis has already played a key role in protecting the heritage of the region. A landmark analysis from the turn of the twentieth century (Wilson, 1902) led to initiatives resulting in a legacy of public lands in the region. Regional analysis at the close of the twentieth century (SAMAB, 1996) provided an excellent snapshot of a wide variety of environmental and social conditions almost a century later. Analysis and planning in our rapidly changing world requires more than a snapshot. If we are to protect and restore the essential nature of the region, we require a regional perspective as a fundamental part of all analysis and planning.

Secondly, landscape analysis, which addresses relatively large areas irrespective of political or ownership boundaries, is profoundly missing in most management decisions, plans, and projects. Analysis by site, special area, ownership, county, or state is the norm. Such analysis and planning, while essential, is unable to perceive landscape biological needs and relationships. The landscape perspective relates decisions and plans to biological habitat for wide-ranging species and breeding populations of less mobile species, and provides a framework to address connectivity between areas. Recognizing and planning for landscape conservation areas such as the ones profiled in this document are a necessary requirement to effectively provide for long-term biological and ecological health in the region.

Conservation groups throughout the region have devoted years of research to identify remaining natural areas and the means by which they can be restored and sustained. SAFC has worked with these groups to bring their proposals together with additional biological and watershed inventories to generate a regional overview.  A variety of such “special areas” (see Section VI D.) are the building blocks for larger landscape conservation areas which, taken together, could function as a regional conservation network. The landscape and regional perspectives together provide a powerful framework to determine such issues as how our public lands are managed, or what are the priorities for public acquisition. The landscape and regional context can also demonstrate to private landowners the important role their lands play for conservation and ecological integrity.

Many of these lands have spent most of a century recovering from decades of abuse, and are ready to assume their role in a regional conservation network. The people of the region are also receptive to conservation initiatives. There is tremendous pride and support for natural area protection in the region. Today, the Southern Appalachian economy relies far more on wealth generated by healthy natural systems than it does from harvesting timber and other products on public lands. SAFC’s report Our Green is Our Gold documents that the economic benefits of  tourism and recreation outweigh those from timber production more than 30 times over.

With this basic foundation of supporting work, SAFC and its constituent groups envision a biologically diverse region sustained by a connected network of large natural areas. This vision can only occur if critical areas of our public lands are permanently protected and supplemented with new public acquisitions and private lands managed for conservation. As the following pages demonstrate, the building blocks exist for our region to become a global model for ecological and economic health flourishing in concert. SAFC’s conservation strategy identifies those building blocks and the mortar that can hold them together.


Building Landscape Conservation Areas from Conservation Elements

The Southern Appalachian region encompasses more than 70 million acres in the mountainous portion of eight states from Alabama to Virginia. The region has been drawn historically in many ways. We have used a combination of ecoregion divisions and watershed boundaries to delineate the extent of the region. (map to accompany text)

Establishing a network of landscape conservation areas in a developed region like the Southern Appalachians depends in part on protecting and restoring critical conservation building blocks within core areas of habitat and linking these core areas together. The important first step is to ensure the integrity of the existing and restorable large conservation areas of the region.

SAFC has concentrated its efforts on identifying conservation building blocks that ensure the integrity of at least 20 landscape conservation areas concentrated in portions of the region where national forest ownership provides the opportunity for protection.  Conservation building blocks include (1) currently protected natural areas, (2) unprotected natural areas, (3) old-growth areas, (4) biological hot spots, (5) aquatic watersheds, (6) high-priority areas for public acquisition, (7) conservation easement areas, and (8) cultural and heritage areas. Management of these components to achieve their highest conservation potential will help establish and restore landscape-scale conservation areas.

Inventory of potential building blocks is far from complete. In fact, many of these landscape conservation areas have not yet been widely recognized as conservation areas, and therefore they are not managed with clear knowledge of their landscape or regional importance. It is time for the essential building blocks within these areas to be identified and for the larger areas themselves to be acknowledged as priceless and irreplaceable conservation areas.

At the same time, sufficient work has been done to identify important landscape areas and to structure the basic outline of a regional conservation system. We feel that it is important to begin work on the areas that are already known, even as we continue the search for other critical components of a regional network.  It is clear that the landscape areas already identified in this document will form the heart of any future regional conservation network. Without them any future system would lack the integrity that is needed to ensure the health and continuity of habitats.
  
The accompanying chart shows the acreage of conservation elements within national forest lands that SAFC is proposing for dedicated conservation management within the following national forests: George Washington-Jefferson, Cherokee, Pisgah, Nantahala, Sumter (Andrew Pickens District), Chattahoochee, Talladega, and Bankhead. These national forests make up 4.7 million acres of federal ownership. Within this national forest ownership we have identified 2.8 million acres of wildlands, old growth, biological hot spots, special watersheds, and cultural areas that we propose for some form of permanent protection to be added to the existing 382,000 acres of existing wilderness. These lands are the key elements to maintaining or restoring the biological and ecological integrity of large landscape conservation areas. Additional acquisitions, conservation easements, ecological management of remaining public lands, and addressing man-made barriers would help consolidate these areas as functioning conservation core areas.

SAFC’s protection efforts have been focused on national forest protection on eight of the national forests in the region concentrated in the Blue Ridge and Ridge and Valley portions of the region and including portions of the Cumberlands.  To give context to this work we have encompassed a larger region defined along ecological and watershed boundaries and have conducted some landscape analysis for this larger area. Our detailed proposals do not address the entire regional area in a comprehensive proposal. Conservation areas do not have distinct boundaries and conservation networks will not truly succeed unless they connect to other conservation networks. It is our hope that other conservation initiatives will join our own along the margins of our region where our view is necessarily incomplete and merely suggestive.


SAFC Conservation Vision - Changing How The Region Is Perceived


Establish the benefit and necessity of analyzing and planning
Regional and Landscape planning make conservation choices at sites and for special areas clear




SAFC’s Proposal for Conservation Lands in the Southern Appalachians


SAFC’s Land Proposal Builds Toward A Vision Of  Ecological Restoration



A Variety of Conservation Efforts Can Be Built Upon SAFC’s Conservation Vision


SAFC Conservation Vision Can Inform Conservation Efforts – SAFC Does Not Have To Do It All

Conservation Area Building Blocks

The Regional Conservation Plan is Composed of Landscape Conservation Areas


                         

Regional Landscape Areas

                                               
                             

Iron MtnsLegend

Within the regional conservation plan, landscape conservation areas reveal much of the detailed ownership/management patterns and relationships

 

Using Biological Values to Evaluate and Prioritize Special Areas


  The Regional View:
Coverages representing desirable attributes for conservation are converted to grids with values that represent relative contributions to conservation priorities.


Southern Appalachian Unroaded Areas

Southern Appalachian Possible Old GrowthSouthern Appalachian Verified Old Growth

Southern Appalachian Biological Sites

Southern Appalachian Special Watersheds

The values for all of the grids are added to get a resultant "conservation priority" grid.

Value Grid Process

Southern Appalachian Priorities

Southern Appalachian Priorities with Special Areas

Using Biological Values to Evaluate and Prioritize Special Areas


The Landscape View: Iron Mountains Example

Iron Mountains Overview

Iron Mountains Unroaded Areas

Iron Mountains Old Growth

Iron Mountains Biological Sites

Iron Mountains Aquatic Diversity Watersheds

Iron Mountains Conservation Priorities

Iron Mountains Conservation Priorities with Special Areas

    Conclusions

Grid Analysis of conservation values in the Southern Appalachians and also in Landscape Conservation Areas serves to verify the conservation value of previously identified "Special Areas" - wilderness, inventoried roadless, and conservationist identified Mountain Treasure areas.  Within these special areas the grid analysis provides a tool to evaluate the relative conservation priorities of areas. The analysis also offers a tool to evaluate other tracts of land for conservation purposes. One of these uses would be to evaluate areas being considered for public acquisition. Since funds for acquisition are in limited supply, evaluating the relative conservation value of prospective tracts could help determine priorities for acquisition campaigns.
   
Since conservation values were relative and somewhat subjective, different values could have been assigned for different conservation attributes. Some sensitivity analysis has been performed to see what effect changing values would make in the overall outcome. Although the separation between lowest and highest values is changed, the overall pattern of significant conservation areas remains relatively unchanged.  The high priority conservation areas remain relatively constant under a variety of assigned values.       

             
            

Author   Information

      

Hugh Irwin
Conservation Planner
Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition
46 Haywood Street
Suite 323
Asheville, NC 28801
email:hugh@safc.org

(828) 252-9223

FAX (828) 252-9074

Internet: www.safc.org