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Regional Geograhpic Network Partnerships Supporting Sustainable Landscapes - An Example: The North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative
Citation:
KUHN, A., A. Milliken, K. Elowe, T. Chang, AND The North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative. Regional Geograhpic Network Partnerships Supporting Sustainable Landscapes - An Example: The North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative. Presented at 2011 US-IALE Symposium: Sustainability in Dynamic Landscapes, Portland, OR, April 03 - 07, 2011.
Impact/Purpose:
America's natural systems and landscapes are impacted by increasing land use pressures and widespread resource threats amplified by a rapidly changing climate. These changes are occurring at an unprecedented pace and scale. By leveraging resources and strategically targeting science to inform conservation decisions and actions, Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are a network of partnerships working in unison to ensure the sustainability of America’s land, water, wildlife and cultural resources. LCCs are regionally-based management-science partnerships that inform integrated resource-management actions addressing climate change and other stressors within and across landscapes. They will link science and conservation delivery.
Description:
Natural resource management agencies, conservation organizations and other stakeholders are facing increasingly complex environmental challenges that require coordinated management actions at regional and landscape levels. To address these challenges, integrated multi-disciplinary regional science-management partnerships are required. Recognizing this need, the Department of the Interior is working with partners to develop a coordinated national network of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC) focused on issues such as habitat loss and fragmentation, genetic isolation, invasive species, reduced water quality and quantity, and the effects of accelerating climate change which may exacerbate many of these stressors. The LCCs are self-directed partnerships of federal agencies, states, tribes and non-governmental organizations that will link science with conservation actions to address climate change and other stressors within and across landscapes. LCCs will facilitate partners working together to synthesize regional science priority needs and resources to jointly develop the science and decision support tools needed to sustain landscape functions, habitats and species within an adaptive management framework. We present the North Atlantic LCC as an example to demonstrate how a regional LCC partnership operates. The North Atlantic LCC is a useful example because it operates in a region with enormous geographical and climatic diversity within a relatively small area. The North Atlantic LCC comprises 13 states, the District of Columbia and 12 federally recognized tribes, and neighboring Canadian partners. While the 13 Northeast states account for less than 7 percent of the U.S. landmass, almost 17 percent of the nation’s population resides within the North Atlantic LCC.