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Version 1.43 6/21/2004 
Note: You do not need to save. Data that you enter is automatically
stored in a centralized server
located at PASDA. You may log out of any session and return
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Setting Priorities for Conservation in the Piedmont Ecoregion of Pennsylvania A project of Natural Lands Trustand the Conservation Science Forum/ SE PA Conservation Community |
About SmartConservation TM
What is SmartConservationTM?
SmartConservationTM is a critical conservation planning tool for regional assessments. Policy-makers and conservation practitioners can use this tool to make educated decisions about how to prioritize between conservation projects, thereby focusing conservation dollars for the maximum impact. A variety of criteria evaluate a site’s ecological assets, conservation potential, and development threat. These science-based criteria reflect the input of the region’s best aquatic specialists, botanists, community planners, conservationists, herpetologists, ornithologists, and mammologists.
Background Information
When Natural Lands Trust began a strategic planning process in 1997 it became very clear that, given the rate at which open land was being consumed in the greater Philadelphia region, conservation groups needed to act quickly and more efficiently. Natural Lands Trust committed itself to using the limited resources available to protect the most critical remaining open space left in the region, but soon realized that there were no clear, scientifically based criteria for identifying these lands.
Beginning in 1998, Natural Lands Trust gathered over 85 conservation officials and scientists from around the greater Philadelphia region to consider how and if such conservation prioritization criteria could be developed. The result is SmartConservationTM.
How Does SmartConservationTM Work?
The tiered assessments of the SmartConservationTM model act as filters, allowing the user to gradually hone in on the most critical sites for conservation within a certain geographic area. Phase 1 of the assessment requires the user to delineate the site boundary on a GIS-web-based map. One of SmartConservationTM’s many assets is the ability users have to view and manipulate map layers without GIS (Geographic Information System) software on their personal computers.
Instead, through the SmartConservationTM web site, users may select map layers as a basis for digitizing a site boundary on-screen. Stored behind the scenes are a multitude of databases providing information on water quality, animal ranges, vegetation communities, development threat, and land use. [Click on this link to view complete list of the criteria used in the SmartConservationTM Phase 1 assessment.] When a site boundary is digitized on-screen, the computer taps into GIS databases and analyzes information about the site based on formulas and rankings developed by regional conservation specialists.
Phase 1 of the assessment uses primarily publically-available GIS data sets to assess a site’s conservation value. By default, therefore, most of these data sets either imply or predict conservation value but cannot actually confirm it. However, a brief site visit is a required, essential component of the Phase 1 assessment process. This preliminary fieldwork introduces some early ground-truthing into the assessment process that particularly focuses on assessing the extent of on-site disturbance and conservation resource quality that can only be obtained from a brief site visit.
Phase 2 of the assessment involves detailed, on-site field assessments aimed at confirming the conservation potential implied by the public and predictive data used in Phase 1. This stage requires the skills of qualified specialists to complete surveys for bird, plant, mammal, reptile and amphibian diversity. [For guidance on the requirements for completing the second phase, view our Qualification Guidelines, List of Regional Naturalists and Phase 2 Taxon Protocols.] Phase 2 is still under development and we hope to add the full services for this assessment step within the next few years.
What Do the Results Mean?
Our intent was to identify sites of high value and encourage conservation action by targeting scarce resources to higher priority sites first. Although SmartConservationTM numerically ranks sites, these values are only intended to be relative rankings that are comparable with other sites in the ecoregion in which the site lies. The 'scores' should never be interpreted as absolute values.
Who's Involved?
SmartConservationTM is being developed by Natural Lands Trust in partnership with scientists and conservation practioners from the region. Advisory Groups were formed from a list of invited participants, which is available for review.
Major funding for SmartConservationTM has been provided by the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the PA Department of Environmental Protection and The William Penn Foundation. In addition, PASDA [Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access is very generously hosting this application and web site [http://cegis4.cas.psu.edu/] at their own cost.
How to Start a Site Assessment?
Just click on this link to request a user ID and password. Once these are assigned, you can begin delineating your site boundary to start your site assessment.
Natural Lands Trust, Inc.
SmartConservationTM Program
Clare Billett
Hildacy Farm
1031 Parmers Mill Road
Media, PA 19063
tel: +1.610.353.5587
fax: +1.610.353.0517
info@natlands.org
http://www.natlands.org/
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