Climate Change Corridors (Dry Habitat) for North East NSW

## **Abstract** 

This dataset and its metadata statement were supplied to the Bioregional Assessment Programme by a third party and are presented here as originally supplied.



The data integrates best available information to delineate broad wildlife corridors, for fauna occupying dry habitat, along climatic gradients. The objective of the layer is to best delineate large-scale wildlife corridors that are significant for wildlife adaptation to the threatening processes of climate change. The work has been based on key habitat habitats (Scotts, 2003), vegetation mapping layers and NSW Wildlife Atlas and YETI databases to represent areas of the landscape that contain high conservation values and high fauna corridor values.

## **Purpose** 

This project was commissioned by the Conservation Partnerships, Parks and Wildlife Division to identify land areas to develop a strategic approach to the establishment of protected areas on private and other public lands that complements the public reserve system and enhances the CAR design principles such as representation, adequacy and comprehensiveness. The strategy will be based on improving connectivity to address potential impact of climate change. The identification of wildlife corridors for climate change will contribute to the conservation and protection of landscape scale climate change corridors. The project has strong links to the recently announced "Alps to Atherton" (A to A) Climate Change Corridor and is essentially a finer scale interpretation of the A to A concept and function at a regional scale.

## **Dataset History** 

The Climate Change Corridors layer was primarily delineated by using a visual assessment of the landscape based on the spatial mapping of dry fauna assemblage corridors as derived by the existing Key Habitats and Corridors for forest fauna (Scotts, 2003). Fauna assemblages were grouped together to best represent general climatic corridors significant for dry habitat assemblages. The initial design was then refined and analysed using DEC vegetation mapping layers:- Northern Rivers CMA mapping (Ecological ,2005), Forest Ecosystem Mapping (NPWS, 1999) NSW Atlas records, YETI database and visual checking using SPOT5 (2005) satellite imagery. This stage of the project refined the boundaries of the broad corridors and assessed the significance of the corridors for forest fauna that were considered vulnerable to climate change effects. A process of expert review was carried out on the first output from the process with consideration of projected climate change effects.



Explanation  	The product is based on existing desk top data (best available). No ground truthing of the attributes has been carried out. Much of the information is derived through analysis of existing data products and expert review of those products and decision making. Therefore it is likely that some area may be subject to review if adequate field checking were to be made. The data represents a regional scale assessment of landscapes in terms of their benefit to wildlife ecology and landscape connectivity.

## **Dataset Citation** 

NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (2011) Climate Change Corridors (Dry Habitat) for North East NSW. Bioregional Assessment Source Dataset. Viewed 13 March 2019, http://data.bioregionalassessments.gov.au/dataset/8871574a-62ac-4b59-9cc3-bc991a6abd57.

Tags: Central West subregion, ECOLOGY, Hunter subregion, New South Wales, biota
Organization: Bioregional Assessment Program