A first-of-its-kind digital mapping tool will help policymakers, advocates and regulators make conservation decisions as the Biden administration targets its climate and “30 by 30” conservation goals.

Durango nonprofit Conservation Lands Foundation and California-based Conservation Science Partners launched The Climate Atlas on Tuesday after more than a year of work creating the complex and powerful visualization.

“The two major environmental crises that are facing the world right now are climate change and biodiversity loss, and the scientific communities (have) reached a consensus that the best ways to simultaneously address both of those crises is by conserving landscapes in a natural state,” said Justin Suraci, a lead scientist at Conservation Science Partners.

“The trick, though, is that it’s not necessarily clear where to target new conservation efforts to achieve both of those goals,” Suraci said.

At its core, the publicly accessible and easy-to-use online map distills layers of environmental data into a single model that shows decision-makers which public lands should be prioritized for conservation.

In Southwest Colorado, the map shows that land near Silverton, Telluride, Ouray, Pagosa Springs and Hesperus should lead conservation efforts.

“One of the major goals of this work is to try to provide a really clear science-based decision tool that highlights those areas that will help to best achieve both climate and biodiversity goals,” Suraci said.

To create The Climate Atlas, Conservation Lands Foundation and Conservation Science Partners had to develop layers of data that would show a place’s susceptibility to climate change, its importance for wildlife and plants, and the carbon it stores.

The team then had to build models that took the six “indicators” and turned them into a single value for biodiversity protection and carbon storage and climate mitigation.

Any user can go into the map and toggle between the indicators and models while overlaying maps of unprotected U.S. Forest Service lands, oil and gas wells, wilderness areas, and even congressional districts.

“We've built this with larger-scale conservation objectives in mind, specifically the Biden administration’s 30 by 30 goals, and are trying to provide a tool that will be super useful to folks in the administration when they’re doing prioritization exercises,” Suraci said.

Shortly after entering office in January, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at tackling climate change. In the executive order, Biden directed the secretary of the Interior, now Deb Haaland, and other agency heads to set the ambitious goal of conserving 30% of the country’s land and 30% of the country’s waters by 2030.

Though the announcement was much celebrated, little discernible progress has been made toward those objectives with a 2021 report reading more like a mission statement than a concrete road map.

Conservation Lands Foundation and Conservation Science Partners hope that The Climate Atlas can begin making the large-scale conservation Biden proposed more tangible.

“The Climate Atlas comes at a critical phase of decision-making for how the U.S. will achieve the Biden administration’s ‘America the Beautiful’ initiative and address the global and national challenges of climate change,” Danielle Murray, senior legal and policy director at Conservation Lands Foundation, said in a news release.

“Public lands offer the greatest opportunity for federal action, and we’ve built what we believe will be an immensely valuable tool and game changer in how people understand their benefits,” Murray said.

The two organizations created The Climate Atlas as a planning tool for federal officials and policymakers, Suraci said, but the map can also inform local conservation campaigns.

“The advantages of instituting large-scale landscape conservation are going to be felt substantially at the local level, particularly in places like rural communities that have outdoor recreation-based economies,” he said. “Keeping places in natural land cover supports those economies.”

“From a grassroots perspective, I think this can be really useful for folks to advocate for their favorite landscapes in their local region,” he said.

ahannon@durangoherald.com