Conservation Planning in Mobile Bay, AlabamaDeveloping a Spatially Based Priority Habitats AtlasThe Project
Using this data and the Habitat Priority Planner (HPP)—a tool developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center—project teams have identified and mapped habitat protection priorities. The ultimate goal of this project is to create an interactive map that will function as a spatially based priority habitats atlas. Local stakeholders in each area will gain access to the map to help them identify and prioritize habitat protection actions that contribute to local and regional goals. In addition to the project now underway, the HPP will be used in ongoing regional efforts to update and improve the priority habitats atlas. Local And Regional ConnectionsThis conservation planning effort is just one of many planning efforts underway in Alabama. Leaders in the region know that complex coastal issues are best addressed when the planning efforts of diverse agencies, organizations, and stakeholders come together. For example, the information from this conservation planning effort can be used to inform and support long-term economic development plans for Mobile Bay. Identifying important habitats and understanding their value allows community development to proceed in a way that preserves important ecosystem services, which in turn supports the long-term economic well-being of the region. To advance region-wide coordination and communication on habitat priorities, the atlas partners are linking the final interactive map to the Mississippi-Alabama Habitats Database to track and coordinate habitat conservation and restoration activities in the region. The map will also be located in the Gulf of Mexico Alliance’s Ecosystem Priority Issue Team Ecowatch database, which will communicate Gulf-wide the results of this effort as an example of a transferable model for future collaborative conservation planning. The PartnershipThrough this project, the national partners—The Nature Conservancy’s Global Marine Initiative, NOAA’s Office of Habitat Conservation, and NOAA’s Coastal Services Center—seek to protect marine and coastal ecosystems and achieve the following common goals: support local conservation planning and implementation efforts that are informed by regional plans; enhance collaboration among multiple conservation stakeholders; and consider long-term stressors and how they impact conservation priorities. Key local partners include For more information contact: |
To further Alabama’s environmental goals, more than sixty organizations are banding together to update the habitat protection and restoration priorities for two coastal Alabama counties. Project teams have assembled the needed information—which includes habitat data, land use data, habitat stressor information, and other local data sets—and identified key spatial data gaps to be filled in the future. 