Landscape Partnership Newsletter - Flagship Issue 2021

Contents

• Welcome to the Landscape Partnership

• The Southeast FireMap: Understanding the History of Fire

• How to find collaborators: The Expertise Search

Welcome to the Landscape Partnership

Hello and Welcome to Fall and our first Landscape Partnership Newsletter! As we invite new collaborators, projects, and Members to the growing Landscape Partnership community -- including Working Lands for Wildlife and the Southeast FireMap -- we want to take the time to formally introduce you to the Landscape Partnership portal and share our partnership activities. EXCITING UPCOMING PROJECTS: We will soon be hosting two new projects on the LP Portal from NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife 1) a ground-breaking interactive 50-year literature review focused on silvicultural practices and migratory bird responses in the Eastern U.S. and 2) new virtual training on establishment and management of native warm season grasses for livestock forage, northern bobwhite and other wildlife.

The Landscape Partnership portal was developed to help landscape conservation partners find each other and the resources they need to support working lands and conservation efforts across the nation. It is an interactive online clearinghouse that allows partners to share and disseminate resources and collaborate with one another to adapt, reuse, and apply these resources in the field.

This is the first newsletter installment of what will be infrequent communications we share about the Landscape Partnership portal. We are sharing it with all those who are registered on the portal and those who are close collaborators with our Landscape Partnership Members.

How can you use the Landscape Partnership? Through this portal you can:

• Access, reuse, and adapt valuable resources such as spatial data, conservation tools, landscape models, training videos, virtual courses, and reports. These resources include both original products like the Southeast FireMap, public content, and databases dating back to 2006 from the North Atlantic, Appalachian, and South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) and their partners

• Share and disseminate resources of your own so others can learn from your work, access the resources, and apply them in their own conservation and working lands efforts

• Collaborate with others on new or existing resources using virtual private workspaces. Through workspaces, collaborators can quickly communicate and share resources (files, data, etc.) in a simple and organized platform all organized in one location
  
  Learn More About the Portal and Watch a Video about services available for you and your ongoing collaborations.

Who uses the Landscape Partnership? The Landscape Partnership is for any and all stewards of our nation’s lands, waters, and wildlife. The community includes natural and cultural resource managers and scientists from federal and state agencies, nonprofit organizations, representatives from sovereign Tribal Nations, and landscape coalitions as well as landowners, farmers, fishers, and community members. Anyone can use and adapt the landscape resources on the portal, share resources of their own, or interact with one another to develop and apply learning in the field.

Who runs the Landscape Partnership? The Landscape Partnership is not a project of any one group or an organization of itself. Management and upkeep is made possible by a growing number of supporting organizations and projects (called Landscape Partnership Members) that want to increase access to valuable resources and encourage more collaboration between stakeholders. To date, Landscape Partnership Members include NRCS-Working Lands for Wildlife, the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP), the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture, and the Atlantic Salmon and Sea-run Fish Restoration in Maine.

We are actively expanding member involvement in the Landscape Partnership. If your agency or organization is curious about what membership entails, please reach out to info@landscapepartnership.org.

Why did the Landscape Partnership start? The Landscape Partnership was designed to meet urgent needs in the field:

• Public and private landscape stakeholders need a neutral and secure online space to collaborate, share their knowledge and ideas, build resources, and disseminate information with one another

• Landscape conservation resources need a stable and centralized home to make them easier to find, easier to use and adapt, and more durable as priorities of individual agencies or groups evolve over time

• Resilient landscape solutions need stakeholder collaboration to ensure the best resources and knowledge are brought to bear in projects and the right partners are brought to the table

• Conservation and working lands partners need continuity to address landscape issues, both in terms of the continuity of how and where they access resources and the continuity of how they can work with trusted partners. The Landscape Partnership is a continuation and expansion of the online services piloted by the North Atlantic, Appalachian, and South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) and their partners since 2006

Much like an ecosystem, we know that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: only when we are connected to one another and to the resources we need can we restore and conserve the landscapes upon which we all depend.

What’s next? The Landscape Partnership builds on a strong foundation of resources and partnership over the last 15+ years, but we’re not finished. We want the stewards of our nation’s lands, waters, and wildlife to be well equipped with the resources and partners they need to tackle landscape conservation issues at all levels.

We want to know how you see the Landscape Partnership fitting in your work and how we can help you be all the more successful in your landscape work. If you have suggestions, thoughts, or questions about the Landscape Partnership, we’d welcome your feedback in this short survey.

The Southeast FireMap:

Understanding the History of Fire

The Southeast FireMap is one of the latest tools added to the Landscape Partnership. New stakeholders have joined the Landscape Partnership particularly interested in this tool -- ranging from forest landowners to county planners seeking more accurate information about fire risks, to conservation organizations, state and federal agency personnel who apply fire in the field and practitioners who manage prescribed fire training programs.

The vision for the Southeast FireMap beta v1.0 is to better understand fire patterns across the region and improve targeted fire management in urban and rural communities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

The Southeast FireMap shows the history of fire in the coastal plains along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. It creates a mosaic of spatial data, showing where lands have been burned, when they were burned, how many times they've been burned, and how much time has elapsed between burns. We recently updated the Southeast FireMap v1 to include the 2020 burned areas.

“Fire is critical to the Southeast,” shared Lucas Furman, GIS Coordinator at The Longleaf Alliance. “Understanding the history of fire can help us understand the landscape.”

Furman has been a key collaborator in the Southeast FireMap 1.0 and brings over 10 years of experience in wildland fire management, geospatial data, and the longleaf pine ecosystem. He’s eager for the Southeast FireMap to help get fire back on the land.

Before the 1800s, the longleaf pine ecosystem was a valuable economic resource that encompassed more than 90 million acres through the coastal plains. Frequent natural fires kept conditions just right for rare and native plants and wildlife like the indigo snake and gopher tortoise. Longleaf wood products continue to have high market value. But by the early 2000s, clearing and development had drastically reduced the longleaf pine ecosystem to just 3% of its original area (about 3 million acres) and came with greater fire suppression, meaning there were fewer fires allowed to burn in the forests that remained.

Fire suppression harms wildlife and creates risks for communities. When brush and bramble can’t be cleared off in small and controllable fires, it builds up: reducing the open habitat that many species need and creating fodder for roaring and uncontrollable wildfires like we’ve seen out west. Regular prescribed burning brings fire back to the land in safe doses to help communities and native species alike.

The Southeast FireMap helps land managers and communities understand the landscape and prioritize prescribed burning opportunities. “This tool helps us all sing off the same sheet of music. It brings together the collective expertise of many stakeholders,” said Furman.

The work isn’t over yet. Over the coming years, the Southeast FireMap will continue to grow to include more partners, more sensor and aerial data, and new decision support tools.

To access the Southeast FireMap, use the orange button below. To learn more about the FireMap and its many uses, view this recorded webinar from the Southern Fire Exchange. If you have any feedback on the FireMap, you can provide input here.

View the Southeast Firemap The Southeast FireMap is funded by a NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife partnership agreement with the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities and includes leadership and support from Tall Timbers, the Longleaf Alliance, America’s Longleaf Initiative, SERPPAS (the Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability), NC State University, and USGS.

How to find collaborators: The Expertise Search

A wide range of experts use the Landscape Partnership portal — from farmers and landowners to nonprofit leaders, scientists, academics, and conservation agency staff. To help experts find one another and collaborate on landscape resources, we developed the Expertise Search.

When you register on the Landscape Partnership, a blank expertise profile is created for you. You can fill this out to share your expertise areas, what organizations you are affiliated with, the resources you work on, and where you work. Other users can then view your profile and you can view theirs.

Once you create your profile, you can use the Expertise Search in a variety of ways to:

• Learn about the field and different individuals and organizations in landscape conservation and natural resource management across the country

• Find potential collaborators by searching for experts who share your research, project, or funding interests or who work in your area or in similar landscapes

• Identify experts and ask questions about their work, landscape resources, and advice for applying knowledge in the field

To set up your profile, navigate to “My Profile” when you’re logged into the Landscape Partnership.

To honor the talents brought by new users to the Landscape Partnership, we would appreciate your feedback on the expertise categories listed in the Expertise Search. If you don’t see options that adequately describe your expertise when you fill out your profile, please share your thoughts in this short survey. We especially want to ensure that landowners, farmers, ranchers, community members, and other landscape stewards are able to reflect their expertise in their profiles.

To use the Expertise Search, go to the Landscape Partnership home page. Hover over “Our Community” from the top menu bar and select “Expertise Search.” A search engine will appear where you can filter the kinds of experts you’d like to find.

You'll see a long and varied list of experts. The Expertise Search builds on a database created in 2006 with the North Atlantic and Appalachian LCCs and their partners. This database aggregated experts working on conservation projects throughout the region to help partners track who was doing what and to increase awareness and accessibility between experts. The experts associated with the North Atlantic and Appalachian LCCs and their partners are included in the Landscape Partnership Expertise Search. Meet some of the Landscape Partnership Community.

Note: If, for any reason, you would like to opt out of the Expertise Search, please send a short message to info@landscapepartnership.org with the subject line “Expertise Search opt out.”