WORCESTER

WORCESTER
Polygons in this dataset are based on a 90 meter resolution, Massachusetts- scaled version of The Nature Conservancy's resilience analysis. Pixels were assigned a resilience score based on landscape complexity and permeability, stratified by ecological settings across Massachusetts. Ecological settings are defined by unique combinations of underlying geology and elevation. Selecting resilient sites across different settings ensures the widest suite of habitats for current and future biodiversity.Large resilient areas were identified through a density analysis of pixels with above average (> .5 standard deviations above the mean) resilience scores. Where high scoring pixels formed clusters > 500 acres in size, they were selected for inclusion. To account for ecoregionally significant areas that did not meet these thresholds in the statewide-scaling of these data, results of the Nature Conservancy's regional resilience analysis (which spans ecoregions and 13 states in the Northeast) were subjected to the same clustering analysis, and the largest (> 3000 acre) resilient polygons within the Massachusetts portion of the North Atlantic Coast ecoregion were included here. In order to make these data more appropriate for site level planning, developed land classes (based on the MassGIS 2005 Land Use Land Cover data) were excluded. Although the analysis did not take into account sea level rise, coastal processes or shoreline features that would affect coastal resilience, areas below 3 meters in elevation were excluded as a final step to partially account for these impacts. Fragments of less than 10 acres in size that resulted from excluding developed areas and low lying coastal areas were removed from the final set of polygons.The Nature Conservancy may further refine these results in the future to improve their application to site-based planning. For a description of the concepts and methods used to develop the regional analysis, see the report at