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Landscape 3.3 Regions of New Jersey [New Jersey]

State of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP). Full Details

Full Details

Title
Landscape 3.3 Regions of New Jersey [New Jersey]
Description
New Jersey's dunes, beaches, tidal marshes, cedar swamps, vast pitch pine forests, extensive grasslands, peat bogs, maple-oak forests, ridgetops, brackish bays, rivers, streams and the Atlantic Ocean support an amazing array of wildlife. That is true despite the fact that much of its diverse landscape has been greatly altered by human enterprises such as agriculture and development that fragments and degrades wildlife habitat. Sustaining wildlife populations over time requires large healthy landscapes with broad expanses of natural habitat. Thus, the Landscape Project focuses on ecoregions or Landscape Regions where plant and animal communities are ecologically similar and closely interlinked. The delineation of the state into regions serves as a spatial framework for management and conservation of species and their habitats, and as a means to organize information so that it is meaningful and widely accessible to end-users. Geographic features and landforms (e.g., rivers, watershed boundaries, ridgelines, soils, vegetation, etc.) were used to delineate the general area of five Landscape Regions in New Jersey. Region boundaries were shifted to align with major roads (county level or larger) that serve as barriers to movement for many species. A sixth region, the Marine Region, is an exclusively aquatic region that includes the New Jersey portion of the Delaware and Raritan bays as well as the portion of the Atlantic Ocean along the coast of New Jersey. ENSP has identified and mapped habitat for endangered, threatened and special concern wildlife within each Landscape Region utilizing an extensive database that combines species occurrence information with land-use/land-cover classification data and species habitat requirements. The resulting Landscape maps provide an accurate, reliable and scientifically sound basis for habitat protection within each region. One of the Landscape Project"s unique features is that it enables users to focus on the big picture, and not just on individual locations of imperiled and special concern species as those areas become threatened. Thus, within large landscapes, the Landscape Project identifies areas of endangered and threatened wildlife habitat that are important to the maintenance and recovery of New Jersey's endangered and threatened wildlife populations.
Creator
State of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP).
Temporal Coverage
Last modified 2023-07-13
Date Issued
2018-11-26
Access Rights
Public
Format
Shapefile
Language
English
Date Added
August 28, 2025

Location

Links

Cite and Reference

  • Citation
    State of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), Division of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), Endangered and Nongame Species Program (ENSP). (2018). Landscape 3.3 Regions of New Jersey [New Jersey]. . https://gisdata-njdep.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/njdep::landscape-3-3-regions-of-new-jersey (web service)
  • BTAA Geoportal Link

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