Southern Blue Ridge: An Analysis of Matrix Forests - Conservation ...

are essentially unmanaged) to achieve the desired future conditions of these important forests. It is alsocritical to emphasize that the identified core forests can support a variety of low impact recreation.Therefore, we conducted a draft analysis to spatially-identify the best opportunities for these coreforests (i.e., we delineated unfragmented blocks (≥5,000 acres) of heterogeneous, interior forestlandscapes that, being nested within the matrix forest blocks, provide the opportunity for relativelynatural processes to occur or be mimicked through management, resulting in a healthy range ofstructural and compositional forest attributes). These delineated draft interior core forests are intendedto be used as an initial discussion point with partnering agencies (e.g., U.S. Forest Service) and are by nomeans definitive in their extent. The results of these delineations are dependent upon the inputs ofstatewide and national datasets, and are therefore best suited for regional, broad-scale planning. Finerscaleplanning should incorporate more locally-based county and city datasets and air-or- groundtruthingto reflect the most current conditions and appropriate boundaries of these delineated interiorcore forests. The methods and results of this 2012 SBR Core Forest Analysis will be summarized in areport, expected to be released in May 2013.In addition to the identification of core forests, TNC Southern Blue Ridge staff has identified additionalpriority follow-up steps to this SBR Matrix Forest Block Analysis, including conducting Climate ChangeResiliency Analyses related to connectivity of terrestrial and freshwater landscapes in the southeasternUnited States. TNC is currently undertaking both Southeastern Terrestrial and Freshwater ResilienceAnalyses, to complement completed analyses for the northeastern US. The southeastern US ResiliencyAnalyses are expected to be complete by 2014 (for terrestrial) and 2013 (for freshwater). Once theseanalyses are complete, SBR TNC staff and partners should revisit the results of the Matrix Forest andCore Forest Analyses in order to better incorporate areas of expected high resilience in the face ofclimate change and redefine terrestrial and freshwater priorities accordingly. Furthermore, futureconsideration of Ecological Land Units, classified and grouped based on watershed-scale is necessary tobetter incorporate and prioritize representative freshwater systems.Photo by John Warner28