Browsing by Subject "Prioritization"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    A Coordinated Prioritization of North Carolina Coastal Waters and Stormwater Outfalls as Part of NCDOT’s Stormwater Inventory and Prioritization Program
    (2008-04-24T20:53:00Z) Jackson, Jennifer
    North Carolina’s coastal areas face new and increasing challenges characterized by swimming advisories, shellfish closures, and an overall degraded quality of life due to water quality degradation. These challenges arise in part as a consequence of development of water-adjacent land and associated infrastructure. Increasing impervious surface exacerbates stormwater runoff, the leading cause of water quality degradation in the state. Through the development of a coordinated prioritization, transportation infrastructure planning can target waters of greatest importance threatened by pollutant runoff. This project incorporates data from multiple state agencies to develop a coastal waters and stormwater outfalls prioritization for the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Stormwater Inventory Program and other management plans. The prioritization system described herein will be submitted to the NC Division of Water Quality by the NCDOT as partial compliance with the field outfall inventory requirements mandated in its Phase I NPDES stormwater permit (NCS000250). The system is designed to serve as a tool for guiding the allocation of NCDOT resources for restoring coastal water quality affected by roadway runoff. Through effective planning and resource allocation, North Carolina can maintain its identity as a desirable place to live with “Crystal Coast” beaches, wetlands, and oyster roasts using our local oysters.
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    A GIS Tool Prioritizing Dams for Removal within the State of North Carolina
    (2012-04-27) Hoenke, Kathleen
    A GIS tool for prioritizing removal of dams based on ecological and social metrics is presented. The Barrier Prioritization Tool uses a hierarchical decision making framework that entails identification of an objective, criteria of qualities that meet that objective, and measurable indicators to quantify if criteria is met. Here the primary objective is to identify the best dams to remove. Criteria include good habitat connectivity, good water quality connectivity and connectivity of stream miles while avoiding social conflict, improving flow downstream, and improving safety. Sensitivity of rankings to habitat indicators used indicates that indicators of habitat quality overlap. Following the construction of the Barrier Prioritization Tool, three prioritization scenarios are conducted for American Rivers; one prioritization includes social and safety criteria, another includes only ecological criteria, and the third is a prioritization specific to anadromous fish. All three of these prioritization scenarios identify dams within the top 20 ranked dams that are currently classified as pre-identified potential dam-removal projects, indicating that the tool is performing as intended. Dam removal has proven to be an effective mechanism of quickly restoring in-stream habitat for lotic species through connecting fragmented river networks and returning the system to a free flowing state. By aiding in the dam removal project identification process, this tool makes the restoration of streams through dam removal more efficient. In the future, this tool will be used by American Rivers and their colleagues to run other prioritizations of the tool while experimenting with different indicator and criteria weights in order to find more potential projects for removal.
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    GIS Prioritization of Little River Riparian Corridor in Montgomery County, NC
    (2011-04-26) McNamara, Stephanie
    State parks, land trusts, and other conservation entities have very similar missions, to protect and conserve land. However, determining which land to conserve can vary within the mission of each organization. Habitat prioritization has become a common method to support conservation decisions; however, it often lacks consistency and accountability. In this project I worked with the LandTrust for Central North Carolina (LTCNC) integrating geographic information system (GIS) software with Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) analysis to create a quantitative, and more accountable, prioritization method of the riparian corridor located along Little River in Montgomery County, NC. The prioritization goal was riparian corridor conservation in terms of the following objectives: nutrient retention, significant natural area protection, and ease of funding. Each objective was measured using GIS-created attributes. Nutrient retention was assessed in terms of effective imperviousness, effective buffer, and bank control. Significant natural area protection was assessed in terms of the presence of the NC Natural Heritage Program’s Significant Natural Heritage Areas (SNHA) and biodiversity as indexed by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Gap Analysis Program (GAP). Ease of funding was assessed in terms of acreage and adjacency to protected property. Utility and weighting scores were calculated for each of these attributes and aggregated to create an overall prioritization value. The top five prioritization value parcels had little effective imperviousness, high biodiversity, and large parcel size for ease of funding. Overall, this prioritization methodology creates a useful method based on LTCNC’s objectives and preferences for conservation. This prioritization plan has the potential to be replicated with other riparian corridor sites, providing additional consistency to LTCNC’s conservation decisions and adding accountability to conservation as a whole.
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    Identification and prioritization of lands for restoration of Piedmont prairie in North Carolina
    (2007-12-07T15:59:32Z) Taecker, Erica
    In the central Piedmont of North Carolina, prairies and savannas were noted by European settlers to have covered a significant portion of the landscape. Piedmont prairie is valued for its extraordinary biodiversity; at least 277 plant species, some endemic, are associated with this unique area. Rich prairie ecosystems in the Piedmont were maintained by both naturally-occurring and human-ignited fires, which created open fields or patches of prairie within oak-pine-hickory or Piedmont longleaf pine forests. Anthropogenic changes to fire regimes and land use have fragmented the Piedmont prairie ecosystem, such that several of its plant species are now federally endangered. Effective conservation of this native ecosystem in our rapidly developing state depends on a solid understanding of its science. Just as importantly, it necessitates the ability for conservation agencies to act efficiently to protect and maintain areas of intact prairie, while quickly identifying and protecting other areas with restoration potential. This masters project compares the suitability of two multivariate modeling tools, CART (Classification and Regression Tree) and Maxent (Maximum entropy), for predicting the potential geographic distribution of the Piedmont prairie ecosystem in nine Piedmont counties of North Carolina. Natural Heritage “Element Occurrence” point location data of four prairie species were the basis for the models, which considered environmental variables such as elevation, topographic relative moisture index (TRMI), slope, relative aspect, soil clay content, and soil effective cation exchange capacity (ECEC) in the prediction of potential prairie extent. Further, a basic prioritization of the resulting prairie “habitat” patches mapped in GIS highlights areas adjacent to existing protected areas in which to focus conservation and restoration efforts. The results indicated that the habitat model of prairie created by Maxent reasonably predicts known prairie species occurrences without over-generalizing the possible distribution of prairie in the study area. Maxent also highlights that ECEC is the most important predictor variable of prairie distribution, followed by clay content. The CART technique resulted in similar accuracy and explanatory variables, but when mapped, “habitat” covered a large proportion of the study area, less useful for targeting regions for further study. The preliminary prioritization suggests that several zones around Charlotte, NC and in Davidson County warrant further investigation for prairie remnants. With sufficient additional information about current land use and cover, the prioritization can be further refined to reduce the effort needed to find suitable sites for the restoration and conservation of Piedmont prairie and its associated forest cover types.
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    Prioritizing Conservation & Development in Durham, NC
    (2021-04-30) Bugge, Stefan; Dupree-Sood, Connor; Thomson, Thaddeus
    Durham, North Carolina is one of the most densely forested cities in the southeastern U.S. but is also part of one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the region. Development is occurring at a rapid pace and often without consideration for reducing sprawl or maintaining the amenities generated by urban greenspaces. This project seeks to prioritize dense, nodal development, discourage sprawl, and promote conservation of urban greenspaces by integrating environmental, socioeconomic, and logistical factors across Durham County into a geospatial model that characterizes a given parcel’s suitability for development. A walkability model is deployed as well to encourage development along trafficked corridors. Results are examined in the context of Braggtown, a historically black neighborhood with significant canopy coverage that is experiencing high rates of development and gentrification.
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    Prioritizing Land for Conservation in Northeast North Carolina
    (2014-04-25) Chuman, Alex
    The northeastern coastal plain of North Carolina provides a number of irreplaceable values like habitat for wildlife, economic gain through tourism, and social value through recreation and aesthetics. New development in this region may alter existing undeveloped lands that are important to wildlife and the community. In order to preserve lands in the face of this threat, land trusts like the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust (NCCLT) work to protect lands from development in perpetuity. Due to limited funds and resources, land trusts must ensure projects they undertake are both within the mission of the organization and of high conservation value. Site prioritization schemes are a way to aid the decision making process when undergoing conservation projects. In coordination with the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, this study uses a multi-criteria decision analysis and GIS site prioritization to identify parcels of high conservation value in 5 priority regions within North Carolina’s northeastern coastal plain. Parcel level prioritization analyses were performed in ArcGIS using a utility analysis and value-based framework to determine parcels of highest conservation significance. Criteria included in this framework were based on acreage, connectivity with other managed lands, biodiversity, threat of development, and riparian frontage. As part of this process, a GIS Land Prioritization tool was developed that (1) provides summary statistics of important conservation criteria for each parcel across any region of land; (2) allows for manipulation of the actual prioritization method, weighting of values, and point scheme so the land trust can prioritize certain criteria differently in future analyses; and (3) outputs a list of parcels and their associated conservation scores for each parcel depending on the point scheme and weights defined by the user. While the tool allows for any number of point schemes to be used, the analysis performed here uses an equal weighting method across criteria. Results indicate a range of conservation values for parcels in each priority region. The findings from this study and the GIS tool created can be used both proactively and reactively in conservation planning efforts and project decision making in North Carolina.
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    Site Prioritization in Klamath-Cascade Region using GIS
    (2007-05) Fang, YiChin
    Several papers have pointed out the need to focus more on conservation planning on private lands. However, there are only a few strategies for private land conservation (Newburn et al. 2005). In most cases, field surveys have been used to understand certain species’ populations and distributions in private lands. Lunney et al. (2000) used community and field surveys to map koala habitat in private lands. Cox and Engstrom (2001) conducted a field survey to analyze the influence of land ownership on the survival rate of the red-cockaded woodpecker. My project focuses on developing effective methods to prioritize spending for private land conservation program at the parcel level. The methodology that I have developed can be adapted to a variety of land types.
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    Strategic Conservation Planning in Maine’s Bagaduce River Watershed
    (2014-04-25) Sedgwick, Carolyn
    Maine’s Bagaduce River watershed is considered an area of statewide ecological significance. It provides important breeding, foraging, and migratory habitat for a number of species and features thousands of acres of wetlands. Two active land trusts in Maine—the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and the Blue Hill Heritage Trust—are partnering to protect land in this biodiverse region and sought to develop a new and more strategic conservation plan for the watershed. Since funds and resources for conservation are typically limited, it is important to go through a strategic planning process to identify land parcels which offer the highest conservation benefit. Strategic conservation planning is critical because it helps guide the best use of funds and can identify key landowners for outreach efforts. This prioritization process requires the development of a decision framework to formalize and guide decision making. Combining this framework, in the form of a written plan, with geospatial analyses is useful since it reveals the distribution of conservation features across the landscape that are of highest concern to the land trust. For this master’s project, a strategic conservation plan was created to guide conservation efforts in the Bagaduce River watershed. The ecological component of the plan is presented for the scope of this project. First a decision framework was established in the form of an objectives hierarchy. For each objective, a measurable indicator was determined to provide a concrete means of measuring conservation progress. Each of these indicators was analyzed geospatially both separately and with other indicators in order to identify areas of highest ecological value in the watershed. Moving forward, this plan is meant to serve as an additional decision support tool for MCHT and BHHT when selecting and evaluating potential land projects in the region.