Resilience Score: A site’s Resilience Score estimates its capacity to maintain species diversity and ecological function as the climate changes. It was determined by evaluating and quantifying physical characteristics that foster resilience, particularly the site’s landscape diversity and local connectedness. The score is calculated within ecoregions based on all cells of the same geophysical setting and is described on a relative basis as above or below the average. For example, cells of granite bedrock were compared with all other cells of granite bedrock, and coastal plain sands were compared with other coastal plain sands. Our goal was to identify the places most resilient to climate change for each geophysical setting within each ecoregion.

Coastal areas were evaluated separately from terrestrial areas. To learn more about the methods and results, visit the Resilient Coastal Sites web site