Reference Document 5-2
Appendix 5
Highly resilient sites contain many different habitat niches that support biodiversity, and allow species to move freely through the landscape to find suitable microclimates as the climate changes. Resilience emphasizes diverse landscapes where species are likely to be able to move and adjust to changing conditions. While the species themselves may change, these areas are likely to be able to host a continued diversity of species into the future.
Coastal resilience
North Carolina’s coastal and estuarine environments are key areas to build and sustain resiliency in the face of climate change. In particular, tidal marshes and habitats provide vital ecosystem services like shoreline stabilization, water filtration, food production, and recreational opportunities. Identifying places where tidal marshes and habitat provide resiliency to climate hazards currently and in the future is a key strategy in mitigating climate change impacts. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) used remote sensing to calculate the unvegetated-vegetated ratio of tidal wetlands, which compares how much of a wetland is not covered by plants (e.g., sediment, rocks, open water) to how much is covered by plants. Marshes that maintain a higher proportion of vegetation tend to be more stable and resilient to threats like sea-level rise, erosion, and coastal development. This data offers a lens to identify marshes that may be good candidates for restoration to help them persist in the face of changing conditions (USGS 2017). Recent research shows that a high unvegetated- vegetated ratio correlates with elevation measurements that detect vertical changes due to accretion, subsidence, or compaction—meaning that stable marshes with high vegetative cover tend to better keep pace with sea-level rise. In addition to resilient terrestrial sites, TNC also developed Resilient Coastal Sites, which provides a way to map and visualize coastal habitats with the capacity to migrate to adjacent lowlands in order to sustain biodiversity and natural services under increasing inundation from sea-level rise. Scientists from TNC evaluated more than 1,200 coastal sites in the South Atlantic region that contained tidal marsh and tidal habitats to identify places more likely to continue to support biological diversity and ecological functions under rising sea levels (Anderson and Barnett, 2019). It is based on the physical and condition characteristics of current tidal complexes, their predicted migration space, and surrounding buffer areas. These characteristics include marsh complex size, shared edge with migration space, sediment balance, water quality, natural landcover, landform diversity, and many others.
Case study - Adapting to changing weather patterns - prescribed burning
Wildland fire has shaped much of the biodiversity across the Southeast. Not only do many SGCN rely on habitats maintained by fire, but also several game species like wild turkey and bobwhite quail. Prescribed fire, also called prescribed burning or controlled burning, is a critical tool for managing habitat for wildlife, reducing wildfire risk, and meeting ecological objectives, like suppressing invasive species and maintaining disturbance-dependent habitat like grasslands (i.e. Piedmont prairies) and longleaf pine savannas. Historically, wildland fire occurred at large landscape-level scales with much of the coastal plain, sandhills and piedmont ecoregions likely adapted to fire return intervals of 4-6 years with longer fire return intervals closer to the Blue Ridge ecosystem (Figure 20) (Guyette et al. 2012).
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2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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