Assessing critical resources in an "urban backyard": the Highlands region

There are places in the Highlands region where you can emerge from the forest and see the Manhattan skyline. Lying within the most heavily developed portion of the United States, the Highlands are the most accessible, largest area of open space for more than 20 million people living in the Philadelphia-New York-Hartford urban corridor.

Since 1999, the AMC has been extensively involved in the effort to protect the Highlands, mainly through our work with the Highlands Coalition, which is comprised of more than 90 local, state, regional, and national organizations. The Highlands Regional Assessment, undertaken by the AMC and its conservation partners, evaluates the natural and recreational resources of the entire Highlands region. The resulting maps will help create a vision for a proposed network of protected wildlands.

Profile of the Area
The Highlands region was identified by the Central Appalachian Study as a major area of open space in the Central Appalachian region. Running from northwest Connecticut to southeastern Pennsylvania, the region is technically described as the upland areas associated with the Reading Prong geologic formation. The Highlands lie on the eastern edge of the Appalachian Mountain chain that extends from Georgia to Newfoundland.

The Highlands region contains a number of critical features that make it especially important for conservation:

• Importance as a wildlife habitat. The area supports a wide variety of species, including many neo-tropical migrant birds (e.g. black and white warbler, indigo bunting, red-eyed vireo) and rare and threatened species (e.g. small whorled pagonia, variable sedge, Cooper's hawk, vesper sparrow, bog turtle).
  
  
• Importance as a water resource. There are 10 major reservoirs and more than a dozen smaller impoundments that yield 379 million gallons of water per day. These and other public water sources in the Highlands supply drinking water for more than 11 million people in the New York City metropolitan area. Urban and suburban development could significantly affect the quantity and quality of surface and groundwater sources.
  
  
• Importance as a recreational area. Several trails traverse the region, including long-distance paths such as the Appalachian Trail, the Long Path, and the Highlands Trail. The area is also popular for cross-country skiing, canoeing, bird watching, fishing, and photography.

Geographic information about the Highlands region is also available through our Interactive Mapping Service.

Threats to the Region
The greatest threat facing the Highlands is sprawl and development. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that more than 5,000 acres of forests, farmland, and wetlands are developed each year in the New York and New Jersey Highlands alone. This development fragments forests that provide critical habitat to wildlife, threatens water supplies, and diminishes recreational opportunities in the region.

Within the Highlands region, New York's Torne Valley provides an example of this development pressure. Lying along the New York-New Jersey border just a few miles east of Sterling Forest, Torne Valley is surrounded on three sides by Harriman State Park. However, the terraces descending toward the Ramapo River are not protected. No less than two power plants and a quarry have been proposed for this scenic valley, which is highly visible from several hiking trails and vistas in the park.

The Regional Assessment
The Highlands Regional Assessment attempts to identify conservation priorities for the area's many valuable resources. To map the priorities, a number of regional goals identified by the Highlands Coalition were used:

• Management of future growth.
• Adequate supply of quality water.
• Conservation of contiguous forests.
• Adequate recreational opportunities.
• Economic prosperity that is compatible with the other four goals.

AMC researchers are analyzing the Pennsylvania portion of the Highlands region to combine the findings with a similar analysis of the New York and New Jersey Highlands, previously conducted by the Regional Plan Association, and with other information from Connecticut. The compilation of data will provide an overall assessment of the entire Highlands region.

The Assessment employs Geographic Information System technology to evaluate a wide variety of information on resources, such as important wildlife habitat, wetlands, water supply areas, hiking trails, trout streams, large forest blocks, and prime farmland. GIS is a computer mapping system that allows geographical data to be digitally analyzed in ways not possible using paper maps — or perhaps possible but only with great difficulty and effort. Geographic data were collected from existing sources or developed by the AMC. Once compiled, the data relevant to each of the five goals listed above were ranked according to its ability to meet that goal. Data representing extremely critical resources were given a higher value than data representing less critical resources. The ranked data for all goals were then overlaid to show areas containing the greatest density of critical natural and recreational resources.

Study Results, Next Steps
The maps produced from the Assessment's analysis will be provided to conservation groups, public agencies, and the general public. They will allow the identification of the most valuable large areas that are currently unprotected and thus guide larger-scale regional conservation efforts. They can also be used by local citizens groups or land trusts to direct their conservation efforts toward the most critical resources in their local area. The maps will act as guides in producing a Highlands "Vision Map," defining a network of core conservation areas and connecting corridors that should be protected to conserve the region's critical resources.