Conservation Lands Network 2.0

TOGETHER Bay Area

GreenInfo team: Amanda Kochanek, Dan Rademacher, Gregor Allensworth

Project years: 2016-2020

Tags: Applications Development Conservation Environment Interactive Solutions Strategy Web Mapping

Overview

What challenges is this project trying to solve?

In order to conserve 2.5 million acres of priority lands by the year 2050, it will require us set up long-term strategies that involve experts in various fields to meet those goals.
Effective regional conservation and habitat protection strategies must be considerate of the diverse range of habitats and environmental factors within a local region
Create a list of actionable goals that allow us to meet our conservation goals

What were the client’s objectives?

Create a flagship Bay Area regional conservation plan that include recommendations for adapting to and mitigating climate change.
Conserve rare, diverse, and irreplaceable landscapes, and manage them for health and resilience.
Identify crucial habitats, streams, wetlands, ponds, seeps, and associated riparian and upland areas to manage for health and ecosystem resilience.

Results

An overhaul update on Conservation Lands Network from 1.0 to 2.0, which includes setting clear and measurable goals for habitat protection and resilience.
The addition of Conservation Lands Network 2.0 Explorer tool, a geospatial tool that highlights actionable conservation goals within ten California counties, with a primary focus on the Bay Area.
A visual dashboard on the CLN 2.0 website to track our progress in reaching conservation goals.
A series of reports and updates which highlight local and regional progress in a concise manner.

CLN 2.0 1 — Showcase of CLN 2.0's summary function to present area information

CLN 2.0 2 — Screenshot of CLN 2.0's Explorer ool

CLN 2.0 3 — On-the-fly report generation highlighting actionable goals and priorities

CLN 2.0 4 — A example detailed vegetation risk analysis generated through the tool

The Work

Working closely with TOGETHER Bay Area (formerly the Bay Area Open Space Council), we worked to completely update and relaunch the Conservation Lands Network and associated web tools. This foundational dataset has been a key guide for regional conservation funding and habitat protection for more than a decade. The update included a complete rerunning of the underlying analysis and an extensive reimagining of the online Explorer tool and the Conservation Portfolio report.

The most important feature of the Conservation Lands Network is that it sets clear and measurable goals for habitat protection and resilience. The new version continues and expands that effort, bringing in a regional and county-level dashboard with progress clearly shown. And then the Explorer Tool, originally launched in 2009, now provides even easier public access to both the core prioritized Conservation Lands Network and a wide range of reference layers covering habitat, biodiversity, and climate change.

This project covered the full range of GreenInfo’s capabilities, from GIS analysis to use of MARXAN for network optimization to design research to understand user needs to visual design and web development to create the final interface and reporting tools. The new report format includes custom charts, maps, and tables, and breaks down complex information into a series of thematic presentations of metrics including prioritized stream data, wildfire and flood risk, water resources, and climate data. In 2020, we added data on stream headwaters, the wildland urban interface, and fog.