Core areas for rivers and streams in the watershed. These aquatic core areas include streams of relatively high ecological integrity, headwater streams of relatively high current habitat value for brook trout, and large and medium rivers that provide habitat for anadromous fish (specifically, American shad, blueback herring, shortnose sturgeon, alewife, and sea lamprey). There are 424 lotic core areas, ranging in stream length from 1 km to 442 km, with an average of 16 km. Dams present an absolute barrier to the continuity of these aquatic core areas. Core areas are built from focal areas with high value in the aquatic ecosystem-based core area selection index, which are then expanded up and downstream to include areas that provide additional ecological value.

An associated file (aCoreEcoSum.csv) provide details on the makeup of each individual core area. The first file reports the total area of each ecological system that makes up a given core. It also includes other information about the relative importance of a given core in terms of ecosystems. The second file reports information about the importance of the core area as habitat for aquatic species.

View this product as a web map on Data Basin.

Access this data as a GIS download from the North Atlantic LCC website.

Read the Technical Abstract for this data layer (loticCores.shp).