The Biodiversity layers included in the Planners Maps were created by the Maine Natural Areas Program with support from the Downeast Conservation Network as part of a resilience mapping study depicting conservation values for terrestrial, coastal and inland aquatic ecosystems for Washington and Hancock Counties in Maine. The Biodiversity layer includes four sub-layers listed below.

Biodiversity Layers

Terrestrial Co-occurrence: This layer represents the summed weighted values of rare plant locations, natural communities, listed animals, significant wildlife habitats, undeveloped habitat blocks and riparian zones co-occurring in Maine’s Hancock and Washington Counties.

Coastal Co-occurrence: This is a co-occurrence model result of summed weighted feature attributes along the coasts of Hancock and Washington Counties. The features and their weighted values are as follows:

• Seabird Nesting Islands – 3
• Essential Tern Habitat – 3
• Shorebird Feeding and Roosting Areas – 3
• Tidal Wading Bird & Waterfowl Habitat – 2
• Threatened Animal Species – 2
• Animal Species of Special Concern – 1
• Seal Haul-outs – 1
• Shellfish Beds (8 species) – 1
• Seed Mussel Conservation Areas – 1
• Marine Worm Flats – 1
• Historic Cod and Haddock Spawning Areas – 1
• Eelgrass Beds – 1
• Exemplary Natural Communities (S3) – 3
• Critically Imperiled Plants (S1) – 3
• Imperiled Plants (S2) – 2
• Rare Plants (S3) – 1

Co-occurrence of aquatic habitat values for Hancock and Washington Counties, ME using 1-24k flowlines as a base. Co-occurrence layers include:

• Shortnose sturgeon
• Atlantic sturgeon
• Sea run brook trout
• Alewife blueback herring
• American shad
• American eel
• Atlantic salmon
• Brook trout
• Endangered, threatened and special concern aquatic animal spp. (ETSC)

Aquatic Co-Occurrence: All elements contribute a value of 1 except for ETSC which contributes 3 for Endangered spp., 2 for Threatened spp. and 1 for special concern spp. Condition of NHD 24k flowlines, split into 1 km lengths. Condition values are a mean of the Designing Sustainable Landscapes index of ecological integrity score scaled to the State of Maine and the quantile rank (rescaled 0-1) of the full connected length of the stream/river network between barriers. Barriers included were dams, unknown/unsurveyed road crossings (inclusive of all unknown barriers on private lands for which data is not publicly available), and barriers confirmed by survey. Credits: U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, USDA Forest Service, and other Federal, State and local partners (see dataset specific metadata under Data_Set_Credit for details).