Introduction

Hanover is a special place. It sits nearly in the center of New Hampshire's stretch of the Connecticut River:

• it hosts one of the nation's best universities
• it sits at the crossroads of major north-south and east-west interstate highways
• it is a major rest-stop for hikers of the Appalachian Trail
• it has forests and fields, wildlife habitat, and rare wetlands
• it has wilderness

In short, Hanover exemplifies the best New Hampshire has to offer to its residents and visitors. The balance of human culture and natural landscapes in Hanover provides a model for other towns in our state, and in New England.

In order to protect and enhance that balance, careful thought must be given to how Hanover's lands are managed, now and in the future. This report provides information and context to help guide land protection decisions. We hope it will promote understanding Hanover's natural features.

The goal of this project was to provide a preliminary report on the status of rare plant populations and natural communities in the Town of Hanover. Our hope was to initiate the collection of information for informed land conservation decision-making at the town level.

Staff of the New Hampshire Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) collected up-to-date ecological and mapping data of Hanover's natural features. By combining fieldwork to update biodiversity information, with Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, TNC hopes to provide both the scientific justification and the visual tools (i.e. maps) to assist planners in making good decisions when adding to Hanover's already solid conservation lands base. Such landscape-scale information should facilitate further surveys and inventories of specific areas to add to the sample of observation points visited in 1999.