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This project scheduled to be completed in September 2008 is divided into three interrelated products:

1. A GIS-based, landscape-level, suitability map will identify core conservation areas to be prioritized for protection, recognize areas highly suitable for development and recognize areas that would benefit from preserving landscape systems in their development.

2. Launch a developer certification program built around the suitability map to train and influence developers (of any size projects) to incorporate landscape systems into their designs.

3. Identify and incorporate incentives that encourage developers to become certified and reduce the costs associated with best management practice implementation.

Ideally, the incentives identified will create situations where the bottom line of any development project will be more profitable.

We are now planning a training workshop to introduce these suitability maps to potential users.  Using documented and mapped criteria, suitability maps identify both highly suitable development lands and lands that provide “green infrastructure” benefits such as slope stabilization, stormwater reduction, and landscape “connectivity.”  For lands that are both highly developable and that also provide important green infrastructure functions, low impact development (LID) techniques are being identified that can be used during development to protect valuable natural functions and larger landscape systems, thus maximizing both economic and ecological values.

Public workshops are scheduled for the last week in May

Visit the Project Website for complete schedule of the workshops
This project is funded in part by a grant from the EPA.

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