Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy
SECAS brings together public and private organizations around a bold vision for the future of our region. We're connecting the lands and waters of the Southeast and Caribbean to support healthy ecosystems, thriving fish and wildlife populations, and vibrant communities. With a data-driven spatial plan and an ambitious regional goal, SECAS helps accelerate conservation action in the places where it will make the biggest impact.
From the blog
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The beta viewer is an easy-to-use online interface for exploring the Southeast Blueprint. Explore the Southeast Blueprint in the new beta viewer!
Have you ever wanted a quick and easy way to explore the Southeast Blueprint and learn more about the underlying data for your area? The online viewer for the Southeast Blueprint is designed to help you do just that, and a beta version is finally ready for public release!
You can access the beta viewer here. It’s mobile friendly, so you can even check it out on your phone! It’s linked from the Blueprint and Resources pages of the SECAS website. Here are some of the things you can do with this beta viewer!
- Get a detailed pdf report including custom maps and analysis of the Blueprint, underlying plans, indicator datasets, threats, and protected lands information—just upload a shapefile!
- Learn what subregional plans are driving conservation value in your area. In some subregions (Florida, South Atlantic, and Nature’s Network), you can dig deeper into the underlying indicators that are driving those priorities.
- See how urbanization and sea-level rise are predicted to impact your area, as well as the conserved status and ownership of protected lands.
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Aerial view of Chassohowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. Photo by Joyce Kleen, USFWS. SECAS evaluation report now available
The final report from a comprehensive evaluation of the SECAS partnership is now available for download here. “SECAS Futures: Structuring Governance to Achieve Landscape-scale Conservation Outcomes” is the product of a year-long effort to examine how SECAS is adding value to partner organizations and sustaining progress toward meeting its vision and goal.
The SECAS Futures project was requested by the interim SECAS Steering Committee in 2019 to evaluate existing governance structures, operational processes, and to make recommendations that will sustain and enhance delivery of value from the partnership into the future. While existing structures and processes were found to be effective as a regional forum for collaboration and as an information hub for science delivery and decision support, a number of overarching and complementary recommendations for sustaining value were identified in three main areas:
- strengthening core governance and process elements
- improving communications and outreach
- broadening and deepening engagement
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Southeast FireMap (SE FireMap) is a fire mapping tool for the southeastern U.S. that enables resource managers to improve their regional or local approaches to managing wildfire risk and fire management needs through targeting of prescribed burn implementation and training. SE FireMap 1.0 now available
There’s some great new mapping data on fire across the 9-state longleaf range now available. It’s what we’re using for the 2021 update to the regularly burned indicator used in the South Atlantic Blueprint, which will be incorporated into Southeast Blueprint 2021 this fall. While it’s certainly not perfect, it’s a big improvement over what we had before for fire. In some early test runs of the 2021 South Atlantic Blueprint, this new data is helping highlight some great longleaf on private and public lands that was missed in the current Blueprint.
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Visit the SECAS blog for a full archive of posts.