From a Feb. 22 Sewanee Environmental Institute blog post by Jon Evans.
The Sewanee Environmental Institute (SEI) has partnered with the Land Trust for Tennessee to produce a planning guide for conservation in the southern Cumberland Plateau region. This partnership is being funded in part by generous support from the Lyndhurst Foundation which has identified our region as an area of high conservation priority in the Southeast. This funding is being used to support a SEI Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship for Eric Keen '08. Eric is responsible for compiling much of the draft planning document this spring. Joining Eric on this project is Valerie Moye '07 whose Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship is funded by the Landscape Analysis Lab. Valerie and Nick Hollingshead are conducting the GIS analysis that will provide a landscape level understanding for determining conservation priorities.
The Cumberland Plateau is at a critical crossroads in its history. Extensive landholdings historically controlled by a small number of entities are going on the market. The opportunity exists now to piece together conservation lands that provide meaningful and lasting protection for watersheds, parks, and wildlife habitat on the Plateau. Land trusts have been successfully moving forward to seize this opportunity as is evidenced by the recent acquisitions of former Bowater properties around Fall Creek Falls and Savage Gulf State Parks and the establishment of a conservation easement on the Lost Cove Tract recently aquired by the University. However, much more remains to be accomplished. By producing a planning guide for conservation on the southern Cumberland Plateau, we hope to provide a resource that can inform this acquisition process with landscape-level spatial analysis and provide a shared vision for the conservation community in their effort to protect the natural and cultural heritage of this region.
We recognize that not all conservation can be achieved through land purchases. Our ability to guide sustainable,"smart"growth on the Cumberland Plateau by working with local landowners, municipalities, and state agencies is equally important for the long-term vitality of this region. For the first time, Plateau communities are working together to determine how they might collectively plan drinking water resources into the future. This TDEC assisted effort represents a crucial step towards regional planning as a means to guide growth on the Plateau. Our planning guide will help inform these efforts as well.
Update: Adapted from a March 10 SEI blog post by Valerie Moye
For the past several months, Valerie Moye and Eric Keen have been working from Sewanee's new Landscape Analysis Lab to help develop the South Cumberland Conservation Action Plan. Their aim for the SCCAP project is to incorporate not only ecological values, but also a variety of cultural heritage and public benefits, into a conservation action plan that will help local organizations identify and develop strategies to protect areas where multiple values intersect.
The multi-faceted nature of conservation planning is both challenging and fascinating. Eric, responsible for writing and designing the conservation action plan document, has grappled with how to effectively portray the host of resources that the south Cumberland provides us: outdoor recreation, working farms and forests, wildlife habitat, drinking water, and rich cultural heritage, just to name a few. He has contacted over two dozen local authorities, ranging from government officials to historians, in order to create a comprehensive narrative of exactly what we are trying to preserve. Valerie's task has been trying to map as many of these values as possible in a Geographic Information System. This includes gathering existing data from TN, AL, and GA, the three states included in the 3.5 million acre project area, and in some instances creating new datasets. The framework for the landscape analysis is is broken into three tiers: ecological values, such as forest cores, aquatic habitats, and landscape connectivity; conservation opportunities and threats, such as land ownership, restoration potential, and risk of development; and public benefits, such as drinking watersheds, view sheds, and recreation value.