Conservation Tools

This article provides a review, analysis, and ecological critique of the four principal types of conservation development: (1) conservation buyer projects, (2) conservation and limited development projects, (3) conservation subdivisions, and (4) conservation-oriented planned development projects.

This paper presents a methodology for rating existing or potential conservation land according to ten criteria weighted to reflect the needs of the local community in which the land is located. The ratings may be used to determine priority for public acquisition.

Handouts for workshop regarding managing open space in subdivision

This user-friendly guide bridges the gap between conservation biology and its application to typical land trust projects. Intended for land trusts, landowners, biologists, planers, and students, the handbook explains biodiversity and how it's conserved, what types of biological information are most useful, and how to gather such information through reviews of freely-available data sources and on-the-ground biological inventories. The book also explains how to apply biological information to standard land protection tasks, such as project selection, fundraising, drafting conservation easement language, compiling baseline documentation, writing management plans, and how the information helps land trust projects conform to IRS Treasury regulations and Land Trust Standards and Practices.

This is the second title in the Land Trust Alliance's Standards and Practices Curriculum series. Learn how to determine what land or easement transactions are appropriate for your organization and go through the steps in planning a successful project. Learn how to develop and apply sound project selection criteria; document the public benefit of transactions; create customized acquisition criteria and project planning forms; and so much more.

This twenty page manual defines "green infratructure" and lays out a six step process for a community that wants to protect the critical open spaces needed for ecological, economic and human health.

Maryland's Green Infrastructure Assessment is a tool developed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to help identify and rank areas of greatest statewide ecological importance as well as those at greatest risk of loss to development. The methods developed are being applied at the multi-state, state, regional and local government levels to guide conservation efforts.

This report addresses the implications of continued changes in land use for the natural resources of the New York-New Jersey Highlands. It concludes that land use change is transforming the Highlands directly through land conversion and indirectly through habitat fragmentation. The multiple parts of the report can be downloaded from the web page.

The Pennsylvania Highlands Conservation Information Center (PHCIC) provides tools to assist conservation planning and implementation as well as to track land conservation results in the PA Highlands.

The PA Rivers Registry contains links to full-length, on-line versions of PA Rivers Conservation Plans approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Each plan is a locally-developed, watershed-based land and water conservation strategy that includes maps and inventories showing zoning, land use patterns, existing natural, historic and other relevant resources, analysis of the current condition of land and water resources, descriptions of threats to local land and water resources.

The Important Bird Area (IBA) Program in the United States has grown to include over 2100 sites (National Audubon Society 2008), leading to the inevitable challenge of how to advance conservation at numerous sites with limited resources.

EPA's Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) program is an approach to regional scale, priority-setting assessment being developed by EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD). ReVA will expand cooperation among the laboratories and centers of ORD by integrating research on human and environmental health, ecorestoration, landscape analysis, regional exposure and process modeling, problem formulation, and ecological risk guidelines.

This paper summarizes a set of prioritization, targeting, and optimization developments at the state, watershed, and sub-watershed levels for selecting specific conservation practices.

The Schuylkill Watershed Priority Lands Strategy is a new model that recognizes the land-water connection and identifies the highest priority lands to protect. GIS modeling was used to identify areas within the Schuylkill Watershed that are the most important to preserve for both ecological and drinking water source protection, further defined by development threat over the next 20 years. This website is designed to make the data, methodology, results and maps of the Schuylkill Watershed Priority Lands Strategy easily accessible to open space planners, land trust staff, municipal officials, funders and others for use in making strategic open space protection decisions.

This website is designed to make the data, methodology, results and maps of the Schuylkill Watershed Priority Lands Strategy easily accessible to open space planners, land trust staff, municipal officials, funders and others for use in making strategic open space protection decisions.

SmartConservationTM is a conservation planning tool for regional assessments. Policy-makers and conservation practitioners can use it to make educated decisions about prioritizing conservation projects. The tool evaluates a site’s ecological assets, conservation potential, and development threat using science-based criteria developed by the region’s best aquatic specialists, botanists, community planners, conservationists, herpetologists, ornithologists, and mammologists.

Helping Communities Address the Water Quality Impacts of Sprawl

The purpose of this report is to present a synthesis of the USGS Chesapeake Bay science related to the Chesapeake Bay Program's 2001–06 goals and their implications for environmental management. The report provides USGS findings that address the science needs of the Chesapeake Bay Program's restoration goals and includes summaries of 1. land-use change; 2. water quality in the watershed, including nutrients, sediment, and contaminants; 3. long-term changes in climate and estuarine water quality; 4. estuary habitats, focusing on submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and tidal wetlands; and 5. factors affecting fish and waterbird populations.

The Practical Negotiator covers the basic process and strategies of negotiation. It presents a three-stage model of negotiation in which participants diagnose their situation, attempt to negotiate a formula or common understanding of their conflict in terms that permit its resolution, and settle the details of the conflict by applying the formula. The book discusses the skills and personality traits needed by the practical negotiator, goes into detail about the stages of the negotiation process, and examines the various features which structure the negotiation process, including the relative power of the various participants, the size and complexity of the negotiation teams, public opinion, the uses of various channels of negotiation, and the degree of autonomy granted to negotiators.

The Development Threat Assessment for SmartConservation, which analyzed the 5-county area surrounding Philadelphia, was compiled by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission for the Natural Lands Trust between 2002 and 2003. The data used was already partially or completely available, allowing the completion of an analysis that would have otherwise been too costly and time-consuming. Five subcomponents of data were used: trend friction map, employment center travel time analysis, building activity, vulnerability index & sewer service areas.

The Virginia Vulnerability Model maps predicted growth in Virginia, which can indicate potential land use change to an urban or suburban use.

This web page gives an overview of the Virginia Vulnerability Model, which was developed in an effort to map predicted growth in Virginia. This model can be integrated with other datasets, such as the VCLNA Cultural Model or Ecological Model, to identify which cultural and ecological cores are most at risk to growth pressures. The model may be used to help guide local land use planners in the development of their comprehensive plans in an effort to control growth and subsequent development within their jurisdiction. It allows users to look at the landscape as a whole and assess how growth may impact the environment, what remaining farmland or timberland is available and how water quality will be affected before more development is introduced.