Land facet data for North America at 100m resolution.

We developed a dataset categorizing the North American continent into physical habitat types at 100m resolution. The input data used included elevation and soil type. Further details on methodology are available here. The data is provided via a link to a zipfile containing TIFF (.tif) format files that can be imported into ArcGIS or other GIS applications. Projection information is available here.

One potential strategy for protecting biodiversity in a changing climate is based on the idea of protecting the diversity of abiotic conditions that influence patterns of biodiversity. In this strategy, conservation features (the “targets” considered in the conservation planning process) are derived from data on physical features such as topography, soils, and geology. The approach has been described as “conserving the ecological stage” or protecting “land facets” or “enduring features”. Species distributions, communities, ecosystems, and broader patterns of biodiversity are clearly influenced by abiotic drivers such as soils, geology, topography, and climate. Although climates will change relatively rapidly over the coming century, soils, geology, and topography will not. Thus, local, and some regional, climate patterns and gradients influenced by topography will persist (e.g., higher elevations will still be cooler than lower elevations, although both will likely be warmer) as climates change. The hypothesis underlying use of land facets in climate adaptation planning is that by protecting a diversity of land facets, it may be possible to protect areas that will foster a diversity of biota in the future, albeit different biota than those areas would protect today. Although land facets are clearly an imperfect coarse-filter surrogate for biodiversity, physical habitat diversity may still represent a useful additional source of data that can augment biodiversity data in conservation planning processes.