BLM Releases North Slope REA
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The Bureau of Land Management announces availability of the North Slope Rapid Ecoregional Assessment, or REA, summarizing the conditions of nearly 62 million acres of the North Slope region of Alaska. REAs gather and synthesize existing data for all the lands in an ecoregion and identify important habitats for fish, wildlife, and species of concern. REAs also help identify areas that are not ecologically intact or readily restorable; and where development activities, such as transmission lines, may be directed to minimize potential impacts. REAs then gauge the potential of these habitats to be affected by four overarching environmental change agents: climate change, wildfires, invasive species, and development."Resource specialists and managers in Alaska are charged with use and stewardship of the largest, most intact landscapes in the United States," said BLM Alaska State Director Bud Cribley. "Taking a landscape approach to understanding the current status and trend of resources and stressors and what is projected for the future, is critical to informing management decision making and understanding potential cumulative effects. The North Slope REA provides a positive step toward developing landscape scale baselines for this management area that BLM Alaska will leverage for years to come." Two REAs have been completed in Alaska: The Seward Peninsula REA and the Yukon-Kuskokwim-Lime Hills REA. With the completion of the North Slope REA, the Central Yukon REA is the only remaining assessment in progress. It is scheduled to be completed later this year.The REA data are available through the BLM's recently launched Landscape Approach Data Portal on www.landscape.blm.gov. The online data portal provides the public with access to thousands of geospatial datasets, live map services, geoprocessing models and documents produced by the BLM. With the aim of connecting people to landscape-scale data to help them in decision-making, the portal also allows users to simultaneously search for data from the US Geological Survey's ScienceBase, Data.gov and ArcGIS.com.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land located primarily in 12 western states, including Alaska, on behalf of the American people. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. Our mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of America’s public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.