Considerations for the Best Use of the SCA Tools

• The SCA tool suite is intended to be used as a conservation planning support mechanism to inform development of projects and proposals for land conservation. The SCA tool suite is intended to be non-prescriptive and used voluntarily by conservation partners in the Gulf Coast Region (GCR). The conservation tools should not be viewed as an exhaustive source of information, and any use should be complemented with other local data and knowledge.

• The Conservation Planning Inventory Tool (CIT) represents an extensive, but not exhaustive, list of plans with associations to land conservation in the GCR. Additional plans not yet evaluated may be submitted for consideration. Some of the links to plans in the CIT may be broken due to changes to web links from source sites. Please report any broken links to the SCA team at [e-mail].

• All data measures in the Conservation Prioritization Tool (CPT) and the Conservation Visualization Tool (CVT) reflect priorities identified by GCR stakeholders and are defined to describe general features of an area for conservation considerations reflected in the tools at a resolution of 1 km2. Areas of interest that are smaller than 1 km2 should be supplemented with finer resolution information to ensure accuracy.

• The SCA database uses the most recent version of each source datum to minimize any error induced by time lag. As newer versions of each data source emerge, the SCA team will work quickly to update the database with the most recent sources.