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Testimonial

Alicia Logalbo

Chief of Environmental Analysis Section, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District

Alicia Logalbo, USACEIn 2016, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was asked to complete a tall order in a short window: develop a comprehensive and integrated restoration plan that provides a roadmap for habitat restoration and conservation in the 64,000 square-mile Chesapeake Bay Watershed based largely on existing data and input from more than 200 stakeholders in 24 months.

“Because our study area was so broad, we didn’t do site investigations,” explained Alicia Logalbo, Chief of the Norfolk District’s Environmental Analysis Section. “We focused on identifying places where partners could get the most habitat restoration and conservation benefits based on the goals and outcomes outlined in the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Agreement,” which established a shared vision for the restoration of the Bay across political jurisdictions.

The agreement focuses on 10 overarching goals related to biodiversity, clean water, climate resiliency, conservation, and community engagement. Given that those goals can be approached through a multitude of different sites, actions, and initiatives, the fundamental question becomes, where are the best places to start?

“There are many restoration opportunities, but we wanted to get that down to a manageable amount and also identify those opportunities that optimize multiple Bay Agreement goals and outcomes,” said Logalbo. “We wanted to take those broad goals and opportunities and put them on the map.”

No point in reinventing the wheel

The Comprehensive Plan optimizes restoration opportunities in the watershed based on input from 200 stakeholders, including all of the states and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field offices in the region.

Mapping meaningful conservation and restoration opportunities requires synthesizing and analyzing lots of information about what partners want to sustain at what level, and the threats or barriers that could keep that from happening. “We only had two years to develop the plan, so wherever possible, we wanted to existing data to achieve our goals,” said Logalbo.

But there were some data gaps that needed to be filled, and the team was grappling with how to fill them when the Norfolk District branch chiefs and technical staff members were serendipitously briefed on Nature’s Network in a monthly meeting.

“As soon as I saw the presentation, I knew it would be applicable,” said Logalbo. Nature’s Network addressed two of the missing links: imperiled species and connectivity.

It also addressed concerns about sacrificing scientific rigor for the sake of efficiency. “I was excited to see the connectivity analysis because that’s a complicated undertaking,” she said. “I was impressed by the long collaborative process that went into Nature’s Network, and the resulting tools.”

Layers of meaning

Combined with their own data, Nature’s Network helped the Corps narrow in on restoration and enhancement opportunities in the watershed to provide a biodiverse portfolio of benefits.

“We looked at lot of factors for prioritization in the watershed, like development threats and stream restoration potential, but we wanted to be able to optimize for wildlife,” said Logalbo.

Bog turtle

Bog turtle is considered imperiled in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and is one of thousands of species whose habitat needs are incorporated into Nature’s Network.

The imperiled species layer offered spatially explicit information about the location of the most important habitat for fish and wildlife species, and the connectivity analysis helped them understand how to ensure that habitat could be fully utilized as part of functioning network.

“I think regional information really helps you focus,” she said, “You can fine tune it with local information or field visits, but regional perspective gives you the broad brush to optimize, and then zoom into important areas you can verify.”

Ultimately, the hope is that more than just a shared starting point for conservation, the plan will give different stakeholders a path to move forward at any scale.

“The plan is for everyone to take part in implementation,” said Logalbo. “Once they have a starting place, we want them to be able to make restoration and conservation happen.”

Learn more:

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Comprehensive Plan and Restoration Roadmap

Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement

Conservation outcome

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers new Chesapeake Bay Comprehensive Plan, which incorporates data from Nature’s Network, has opened dialogue with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about reviving lapsed restoration projects in the Choptank River, which was identified as a high priority area for tidal wetlands.

Read more stories from partners

  • Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries
  • Maryland Department of Natural Resources
  • Atlantic Coast Joint Venture
  • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
  • Wildlife Conservation Society
  • Chesapeake Conservancy
  • U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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