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Identifying the Valued Ordinary, as a Step toward Scenic Landscape Conservation. Visual Resource Stewardship Conference Landscape and Seascape Management in a Time of Change.: The Georgia Scenic Byways program (GDOT, 2017) is a “grassroots effort … to identify, preserve, promote and protect treasured corridors throughout the state.” There are fifteen such corridors designated by Georgia DOT, their only protection is a restriction on roadside billboards. Despite frequent avocation of the beauties of Georgia highways, there is no systematic articulation of the physical attributes of a scenic landscape, how such attributes would be identified and thus protected, nor the expertise or resources to devote to new discoveries.

Integrating Visual and Cultural Resource Evaluation and Impact Assessment for Landscape Conservation Design and Planning: While there is an increased need for cultural resource conservation and management in North America, there are few approaches that provide robust integration and combined assessment of visual and cultural resources. Determining the scenic value of important views and identifying potential risk for loss of that view are core components needed to design protection preserving scenic quality and the cultural resources contributing to scenic value and overall sense of place.

The use of crowdsourced and georeferenced photography to aid in visual resource planning and conservation: The advent of Web 2.0 and the growth of social media platforms have fostered an environment for the documentation and sharing of landscape imagery. In addition to looking at the site scale, using these big data allows for visual landscape assessment at the regional scale. The onset of Marcellus shale gas development in the state of Pennsylvania concurrent with the rapidly widening availability of crowd-sourced citizen photography has provided a valuable opportunity to study crowdsourced and georeferenced photography as an aid in visual resource conservation design and planning. As Trombulak and Baldwin (2010) outline, the goals for this work include identifying spatially explicit measures of change in the landscape, being able to predict spatially explicit threats to the landscape, recognizing sites within the region that are important or irreplaceable, and prioritizing areas for conservation action to address pressures and preserve/conserve exceptional sites in the future.

Report Card to Assess Current Conditions, Ecological Health of Natural Resources in Tennessee River Basin: The Appalachian LCC is supporting researchers from the University of Maryland in developing an assessment of ecological health, or a “Report Card”, for the Tennessee River Basin.

Report Card to Assess Current Conditions, Ecological Health of Natural Resources in Tennessee River Basin

Conservation Planning Atlas: The Appalachian LCC Conservation Planning Atlas (CPA) is a platform for data discovery, sharing and collaboration for stakeholders throughout the Appalachian LCC region. With the CPA you can search for spatial datasets, visualize LCC-supported projects, and learn more about conservation science and design in the region.

Conservation Planning & GIS: A major role of the LCC is to think about and facilitate conservation planning at a larger spatial and temporal scale. Although there is a plethora of successful conservation agencies doing work on multiple scales throughout Appalachia, these efforts are often limited in scope. In order to accomplish the vision of landscape-scale conservation planning, the LCC has developed this integrated platform -- a planning tool -- for broad dissemination of key conservation literature, analytical products and information, and other resources to help guide land managers with on-the-ground conservation action throughout the region. In this section of the portal you will find a framework that supports a systematic conservation planning effort, ranging from setting conservation targets to ultimately measuring conservation success. The web page navigation is presented as a series to allow the reader to progress in an intuitive and strategic planning manner. In addition, products such as a web-enabled map viewer or predictive modeling results and decision support tools that the user select key input variables can be dynamically executed.

Appalachian Naturescape Conservation Design: Well-connected landscapes are necessary to sustain many of the natural and cultural resources important to the Appalachian region today and into the future. If these large connected areas are to endure and be resilient to impending environmental changes, it will require a collaborative effort involving many organizations and reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries. The outcome of the Appalachian LCC Conservation Planning process and modeling is a dynamic ‘Conservation Blueprint’ or 'Landscape Conservation Design' called NatureScape. This is a dynamic or living design envisioned as an ongoing consultation with the conservation community - continuously incorporating new information and datasets as well as engaging subject-matter experts and committed stakeholders. Phase I and II of this effort are described below. NatureScape Map

Energy: The Appalachians are a landscape rich in globally-significant biological diversity, ecosystem services that provide clean drinking water and outdoor recreation to countless human communities, and energy resources that meet national and regional demands for coal, oil, and natural gas. For centuries, the Appalachians have been a hotspot for America's energy needs. Large expanses of forests provided early settlers with a ready supply of wood fuel. As the nation industrialized, the region became the center for coal, oil, and recently natural gas extraction. Though essential for society, the extraction of these energy resources has altered the Appalachian landscape, impacting biodiversity and natural places that make the Appalachians unique. Energy has and still is one of the leading drivers of landscape change in the region.

Ecosystems Benefits and Risks: Ecosystem services are the benefits people receive from nature. These are abundant in the Appalachians, from clean drinking water and sustainably harvested forest products to nature-based tourism. They also include the sense of home that communities find in rural landscapes and the values that Americans place on conserving biodiversity.

Working Lands for Wildlife: Through Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW), NRCS works with partners and private landowners to focus voluntary conservation on working landscapes. NRCS provides technical and financial assistance to agricultural producers, helping them plan and implement conservation practices that benefit target species and priority landscapes.