Background
\r\n\r\n Agricultural lands (croplands, pasture, and rangelands) make up close to half of the land area of the lower 48 United States and therefore have a crucial role to play in supporting connectivity between populations of native species. While intensive farming and habitat fragmentation associated with some agricultural practices represent major threats to native species and their ability to move, conservation-focused management of agricultural lands (e.g., planting grassland or forest strips, diversification of crops) can reduce these barriers to movement and support the flow of organisms across agricultural landscapes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) allocates billions of dollars each year to ag land conservation programs, but information is limited on where to target these funds to maximize benefits for biodiversity, and many landowners may not realize that their lands are eligible for conservation-focused financial incentives.\r\n
\r\n\r\n This interactive map explores the potential for agricultural lands across the U.S. to contribute to ecological connectivity (i.e., the movement of species and genes across the landscape) and identifies potential conservation opportunities on agricultural lands based on their contribution to both connectivity and food production. Here we step through the major features of the map and demonstrate how to use this tool to prioritize conservation actions on agricultural lands, both locally and at the national scale.\r\n
\r\nExplore connectivity on agricultural lands
\r\nWhile agricultural lands such as cropland and pasture typically support less movement of organisms than surrounding natural landscapes, connectivity through these working lands can in some cases be substantial, providing important linkages between areas of high quality habitat. This map allows you to view the types of agricultural land cover that occur in a given area and the degree of connectivity through those agricultural lands and surrounding landscapes. Data on agricultural land cover were produced for the American Farmland Trust’s Farms Under Threat analysis.\r\n
\r\nfiller text
filler text
Explore agricultural land productivity, versatility, and resilience (PVR)
\r\nPVR is an index of agricultural land quality developed by the American Farmland Trust and Conservation Science Partners that estimates the suitability of a given location for long-term food production based on soil characteristics, growing season length, and land cover type (for more information on PVR, see the American Farmland Trust’s Farms Under Threat analysis). With this map, you can explore the PVR value of agricultural lands in your region or across the U.S.
\r\nfiller text
Identify conservation opportunities based on connectivity and PVR rankings
\r\nBy combining connectivity and PVR, this map identifies several categories of conservation opportunity on agricultural lands. The Connectivity and PVR Rankings layer classifies all ag land locations as low, medium, or high for both connectivity and PVR (see matrix in bottom left), which can then inform the type of conservation action that may be suitable for that area. For instance, locations that have high values of both connectivity and PVR (shown in purple) may be strong candidates for programs that incentivize wildlife-friendly farming practices (e.g., the USDA’s Conservation Stewardship Program) given their importance for both species movement and food production. Locations with high connectivity value and low PVR (dark blue) may be targets for removal from production and for ecological restoration to bolster their potential to support wildlife habitat and the movement of organisms (e.g., through the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program). Areas in yellow represent high-quality agricultural lands with relatively limited value for connectivity and may be good candidates for programs that keep lands in production and protect against conversion to urban or residential development (e.g., the USDA’s Agricultural Conservation Easement Program).
\r\nfiller text
At the local level, farmers, land trusts, and advocates can use this conservation opportunity tool to explore the types of conservation-focused financial incentives that might make sense for the landscapes they work in and care about. At a larger scale, the County-Level Summaries layer facilitates the rapid identification of regions across the U.S. with substantial amounts of agricultural land in a given category for PVR and connectivity, which can help facilitate prioritization and allocation of conservation funds by the USDA and other organizations. For instance, the county layer shows a cluster of counties in central Virginia with large amounts of agricultural land in the ‘high connectivity-high PVR’ category (purple). Zooming in on this area then allows the user to see which tracts of agricultural land are in that ‘high-high’ category and thus may be good candidates for conservation-focused incentives.
\r\n\r\nfiller text
\r\n Download the technical summary and methods \r\n \r\n {\" \"}here.\r\n \r\n
\r\n