In February 2023, we added to the CLN Explorer an important body of work by the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network (SCMSN): The Sustainable Landscape Health Assessment (SLHA). SCMSN assessed multiple factors involved with sustainable stewardship of the Santa Cruz Mountain Range. These factors are in the realms of stewardship investment, ecosystem service provision for people, and ecosystem integrity for natural processes — these can be thought of as pillars of sustainability. The SLHA is a first of its kind in the Bay Area as it attempts to blend several socio-ecological concepts into one spatial (map-based) framework. The value of the new information is how it complements the existing CLN information. Ecological resilience, which is the CLN’s current focus, is only one facet of the broader concept of resilience in socio-ecological systems (Beller et al. 2018; Walker and Salt 2012). In an urban and urbanizing region such as the Bay Area, it is imperative to understand the ways in which the ecosystem depends upon social systems for resilience.

The SLHA data have been added to the CLN Explorer as a precursor: It is our intent to support a regional collaboration in the future to expand the CLN to include factors that consider dependencies on social systems and on-the-ground stewardship action by conservation organizations, landowners, agencies, and the public.

To learn more about the Sustainable Landscape Health Assessment (SLHA), please visit scmsn.net/digital-atlas