Each species in the set of SGCN was placed in one of three categories: Aquatic, Crossover or Terrestrial. Crossover species, such as dragonflies and amphibians, use both aquatic and terrestrial landscape features during all or some of their life cycles. Therefore, their associations with both terrestrial and aquatic landscape features were considered in discussions and analyses throughout development of the action plan.

Within each ecoregion and lake basin, the importance of each landscape feature to each SGCN was assessed based on information found in the scientific literature. The categories of importance assigned to each region/landscape feature/species association were:

• Principal: landscape feature is primarily used, essential, optimal and/or most preferred by the species in this ecoregion/lake basin
• Occasional: landscape feature is sometimes used and/or less preferred than the Principal landscape features in this ecoregion/lake basin
• Infrequent: landscape feature is rarely used and/or only used if the Principal or Occasional landscape features are not available in this ecoregion/lake basin
• Unknown: landscape feature is potentially used, but its importance to the species and/or frequency of use is unknown in this ecoregion/lake basin
• Not used: landscape feature is not used by the species in this ecoregion/lake basin

Some importance associations were later refined based on review by species experts and comments received at Regional Technical Workshops.

The Associated Landscape Features listed in the SGCN Summaries include all categories of importance, except "Not used."

The Associated Species of Greatest Conservation Need included in the Landscape Features Summaries are those species that were found to have Principal, Occasional or Unknown importance associations with each landscape feature.

The following PDF documents provide associations between SGCN and landscape features and further classify the data by level of importance of the feature to SGCN.