Ecosystem Vulnerability Resources
The 2018 National Climate Assessment’s chapter on Ecosystems, Ecosystem Services, and Biodiversity provides a comprehensive overview of the latest scientific knowledge on the impacts of climate change on ecosystems. For greater understanding and exploration of ecosystem vulnerability to climate change and other stressors, the following resources are recommended.
Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON)
Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON)
An online mapping information system that consists of a large collection of datasets of species occurrence (e.g., plants and animals) found in the United States, and relevant geospatial layers.
Critical Habitat Mapper
Critical Habitat Mapper
Displays information about critical habitat designations across the United States for threatened and endangered species.
Cropscape – Cropland Data Layer
Cropscape – Cropland Data Layer
A viewer that allows users to view a variety of information including the CropLand data layer, which contains crop and other specific land cover classifications obtained using remote sensing for the conterminous United States.
Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool
Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool
Includes maps that display crucial terrestrial and aquatic wildlife habitat and corridors across the West. The interactive viewer displays the rankings of crucial habitats at a square-mile scale.
EnviroAtlas
EnviroAtlas
A mapping tool that allows users to explore ecosystem services and the built environment across the U.S.
Essential Fish Habitat Mapper
Essential Fish Habitat Mapper
A spatial representation of essential fish habitats (EFH), or those habitats that have been identified and described as necessary to fish, as well as habitat areas of particular concern (HAPCs), and EFH areas protected from fishing.
LandCarbon
LandCarbon
The suite of data products and visualization tools presented here were developed as part of a national ecosystem assessment of biological carbon sequestration. The assessment focused on changes in carbon stocks and fluxes in all the major ecosystems, and on the major natural and anthropogenic processes that control carbon cycling (such as climate change, land use, and wildland fires). The greenhouse gases considered in this assessment were carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO, from wildland fires only), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O).
Landfire
Landfire
A program that provides over 20 national geo-spatial layers (e.g. vegetation, fuel, disturbance, etc.), databases, and ecological models that are available to the public for the US and insular areas.
National Land Cover Database Evaluation, Visualization, and Analysis (EVA) Tool
National Land Cover Database Evaluation, Visualization, and Analysis (EVA) Tool
Provides user-friendly access to national and state land cover and land cover change information developed through the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics (MRLC) Consortium. NLCD EVA eliminates the need for desktop geographic information system software, or advanced technical expertise, by processing NLCD data for the user and providing easy access to that distilled information. As well as displaying land cover information the tool also summarizes general land change trends as well as providing users with the option to specify and explore specific land change classes of interest (e.g., forest to urban).
USGS Ecosystems Map
USGS Ecosystems Map
Displays ecosystem mapping efforts for three continental areas – the United States, South America, and Africa. Ecosystems are geospatially delineated as facets of the landscape generated through biophysical stratification by bioclimate, biogeography, lithology, landforms, surface moisture, and land cover.
