November 12, 2024: We have created a web app that allows you to easily view the Index of Ecological Integrity (IEI) and ecoConnect across the Northeast. The app includes a site scoring tool that produces a report with IEI and ecoConnect scores for a project area, either drawn on the map or uploaded as a shapefile. Note that the app uses the regional version of IEI from the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project, not the Massachusetts version.
EcoAssess is available at umassdsl.shinyapps.io/ecoassess
December 7, 2023: CAPS data, the web maps, and Critical Linkages results have been updated to fix a handful of data errors and include the latest field-surveyed road-stream crossings from NAACC. 272 additional crossings have been surveyed since the last release, now including a total of 24% of road-stream crossings in Massachusetts.
November 20, 2023: We’re excited to announce ecoConnect, our ecosystem-based models of regional connectivity, created with funding from the USGS Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. We assessed connectivity across the Northeastern U.S. at multiple scales and without relying on predefined conservation targets, thus model results work flexibly with various conservation strategies. Results are now available to inform conservation actions aimed at maintaining connected landscapes for multiple species, both locally and across the Northeast.
July 26, 2023: We've added live web maps of IEI and MassDEP Habitat of Potential Regional or Statewide Importance. Look under Data & Maps.
The Conservation Assessment and Prioritization System (CAPS) is an ecosystem-based (coarse-filter) approach for assessing the ecological integrity of lands and waters and subsequently identifying and prioritizing land for habitat and biodiversity conservation. We define ecological integrity as the ability of an area to support biodiversity and the ecosystem processes necessary to sustain biodiversity over the long term. CAPS is an approach to prioritizing land for conservation based on the assessment of ecological integrity for various ecological communities (e.g., forest, shrub swamp, headwater stream) within an area.
CAPS combines principles of landscape ecology and conservation biology with software that compiles spatial data and characterizes landscape patterns. This process results in a final Index of Ecological Integrity (IEI) for each point in the landscape based on models constructed separately for each ecological community.
Our approach is landscape-oriented and focused on a comprehensive valuation of the entire landscape. It attempts to combine many complex spatial relationships in the landscape that drive ecological processes, including population persistence and community dynamics. The CAPS approach seeks to evaluate the ecological integrity of the entire landscape mosaic, not just the rare species and community locations. We assume that by conserving intact, ecologically-defined communities of high integrity, we can conserve most species and the ecological processes that shape and maintain ecosystems over time.
Updated July 27, 2023
United States Department of Agriculture
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Civil Rights and Non-Discrimination Information
This site is maintained by Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment.