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The Official Website of the Department of Fish and Game (DFG)

 
Natural Heritage and Endangered Species

An Interactive BioMap and Living Waters

With the help of MassGIS and the DFG GIS program, the BioMap Core Habitats and Supporting Natural Landscape, as well as the Living Waters Core Habitats and Critical Supporting Watersheds, are viewable through an interactive mapping program.

If you haven't used this program before, you should read the introduction below:

Navigating

Town drop-down menu To navigate right to a town, you can use the drop-down menu on the right-hand side of the map.

To move around within the map area you can use the following tools. Clicking on the tool will activate it, so when you click inside the map area the appropriate action will take place:

Image of Magnifier Use this magnifier tool to zoom in. Clicking once will zoom in a little bit, or draw a box around the area you want to zoom to.

Image of zoom out tool Use this tool to zoom out. Clicking once will zoom out a little bit, or draw a box to zoom out a proportional amount.

Image of pan tool The hand tool will let you pan. Drag in the direction you want to display.

Image of full extent tool Click the "full extent" button to go back to the original, statewide scale.

Scale

At a smaller scale (more zoomed out), you'll notice that only major lakes, rivers, cities, and highways are visible. As you zoom in, more detailed roads and protected open space will appear. As you zoom further in, a digital topograhic map will appear in the background; note that if you zoom too far in, the topographic map will disappear.

Core Habitats

Image of ID tool When you use the "id tool" and click within a Core Habitat polygon, a number will appear below the map area. It will always be prefaced with a "C" (e.g. C154) for BioMap Cores (please note: C154 is equivalent to BM 154 in the Town Core Habitat Reports), and an "LW" for Livng Waters Core Habitats. This is a unique identifier that the Natural Heritage Program uses to track information related to each Core Habitat. Please use this number to look up information about a Core Habitat in the Town Core Habitat Reports, or reference it when contacting the Program for more information about a Core Habitat.