New Jersey's Landscape Project

Since 1972, more than 20,000 acres per year of wildlife habitat have been lost in New Jersey. Moreover, much of the habitat that remains is less suitable for wildlife because of habitat fragmentation. This is especially detrimental to imperiled wildlife, as many of these species require large, contiguous blocks of habitat. Suburban sprawl has consumed land at a rate so rapid that some analysts predict all remaining available land would be developed within 40 years if current urban flight patterns continue. The possibility of New Jersey becoming the first state in the nation to reach build-out is real (Hasse and Lathrop 2001).

The method for generating critical area maps is relatively simple. First, the relevant classes for each habitat type (forest, grassland, forested wetland, emergent wetland, and beach) are extracted from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection land-use/land-cover (LU/LC) data layer. Contiguous patches are created by dissolving different LU/LC classes for each habitat type. Using major roads, patches are bisected to create ecologically significant boundaries. Species models are intersected with habitat patches. Finally, the patches are classified based on the conservation status of the species present.

Rather than focusing on individual locations of imperiled species as those areas become threatened, the Landscape Project identifies critical wildlife areas within large landscapes that must now be preserved to assure the conservation of New Jersey's imperiled wildlife for future generations.