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Nature's Network

Lands and waters sustaining wildlife and people 

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Nature’s Network is a collaborative effort facilitated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Science Applications program that brings together partners from 13 states, federal agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and universities to identify the best opportunities for conserving and connecting intact habitats and ecosystems and supporting imperiled species to help ensure the future of fish and wildlife across the Northeast region.
  • Habitat needs for more than 3,000 species of animals and plants, including those identified as Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) in Wildlife Action Plans revised by states in 2015, and 30 species representing hundreds more with similar sensitivities, lifecycles, and habitat requirements.
  • Important areas for the conservation of several hundred common and rare aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem types, and habitat connections needed for species to move across the landscape.
  • Connected networks of intact and diverse terrestrial, wetland, and coastal systems that provide habitat for wildlife and benefits for people, such as access to intact forests and sources of clean water.
  • Connected networks of intact and diverse rivers and river systems that provide habitat for resident and anadromous fish — as well as other organisms — and benefits to people, such as recreation and clean water.

Nature’s Network is supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Science Applications program, which builds upon a long history of conservation in the Northeast region to unite stakeholders around common goals for sustaining natural and cultural resources, and develop tools and strategies to achieve those goals in the face of uncertainty.

June Workshops!

Join a hands-on workshop to learn how to use data and tools from Nature’s Network to inform your work in conservation on June 27th, 28th, or 29th.
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Photos courtesy: USFWS, Nicholas A. Tonelli

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Welcome to the Nature's Network Prioritization Tool

Using this tool, you can create custom models based on a catalog of over 400 metrics that will help address particular conservation and restoration questions. Some key features:

  • Quickly create custom prioritization maps
  • PDF and CSV outputs
  • Over 400 metrics

Metric description

Name:

Description:

Unit:

Full documentation link:

How does this work?

Load a model

What do these weights mean?

Each weight is a multiplier

When deciding how to assign weights, it is important to understand that each weight is a multiplier for its coresponding metric. After the tool standardizes the raw units of a metric to a quantile scale (0-1), it then multiplies that new value by the given weight. Any negative weight is flipped to a positive number and multiplied by the inverse of the metric's quantile score (this is to ensure a positive weighted score that is more intuitive for comparison). For more information, click "How does this work?" in the first panel above.

Caution

Use this control with a single map

This control limits the display of both the left and right maps. However, because the maps share the same legend, it can be difficult to distinguish them when parts of each are transparent. To avoid confusion, we recommend that this subset control be used when displaying a single map.

May not be useful for datasets with a small range or limited sample size

Each rank represents the percent of planning units less than or equal to this rank. As a result, for datasets with very small range (e.g. count of restoration practices in a single year) or limited sample size, there may be many planning units that share the same value (e.g., 0). In some of those cases, the minimum percentile rank could be relatively high and the subset controls may not seem to have an effect. If this appears to be happening, try clicking on a planning unit with a low score color to see what its percentile rank is.

Metric list