Digital Coast In Action
Data Collection Enables Maine Land Trusts to Set Conservation Priorities
The Great Works Regional Land Trust, representing six communities in southern coastal Maine, needed to prioritize potential conservation projects. As an important first step, the project partners sought to identify farm lands containing high percentages of agriculturally important soils, because agricultural land preservation is an important goal and funding is available for this purpose.
The Process
The partners used land cover data produced by NOAA’s Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) to define and assess the land cover traits in the region. C-CAP data sets were used because they provide one of the best big-picture views of land cover. Local data were also used to categorize other habitat features such as soil types. The result was a clear picture of agricultural soils distributed throughout the region that are available for preservation.
In addition, the Habitat Priority Planner was used because this tool allows users to illustrate, in a map format, the habitat and ecosystem components considered during the prioritization exercise.
This map displays the final selections generated by the Habitat Priority Planner to meet preservation goals.
View PDF version of this map (Downalod Adobe Reader)
Partners in This Effort
- Great Works Regional Land Trust
- NOAA Coastal Services Center
- Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve
View site in Google Earth (Download Google Earth)
