Conservation Focus Areas as delineated for the Land Conservation Plan for New Hampshire's Coastal Watersheds, August 2006. A Conservation Focus Area is considered to be of exceptional significance for the protection of living resources and water quality in the coastal watersheds. In general, focus areas occur in places where multiple important natural resource features co-occur to an extent that is significant from a whole-watershed perspective. Occasionally, focus areas emerged that contained only one or two important features, because the features were considered truly irreplaceable (e.g., habitat for a globally rare species or an intact coastal saltmarsh).
A comprehensive description of the Conservation Focus Area delineation process may be found in Section III of the Land Conservation Plan for New Hampshire's Coastal Watersheds or in the excerpt "Coastal_Plan-CFA_Design.pdf". Comprehensive descriptions of the CFAs may be found in "Coastal_Plan-CFA_Descriptions.pdf".