The Conservation Biology Institute’s recent work with the Deschutes Trails Coalition (DTC) and the Deschutes National Forest focuses on designing a Trails Assessment and Planning Tool for Deschutes County. We have developed a blueprint for the design, in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service and the DTC. In this new phase of the project, funded by the U.S. Forest Service, CBI will partner with the DTC to build a prototype of the trails decision-support tool and sustainability model for Deschutes County. Then we will scale up and customize this prototype to meet the requirements of the U.S. Forest Service and its partners in the states of Oregon and Washington. The Trail Assessment and Planning Tool design includes creating a preliminary version of a sustainability framework that incorporates an interactive spatially-explicit model, addressing the physical, environmental, social, and economic aspects of sustainability. The model is powered by CBI’s Environmental Evaluation Modelling System (EEMS), allowing for its collaborative development with a diverse group of stakeholders, to create a transparent framework for local, regional, and national organizations to answer important questions relevant to trails planning and management.
Proxy Falls, Oregon
Michael Riffle / Flickr
CBI worked closely with the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) to integrate relevant spatial datasets to map areas of high value from the standpoint of carbon storage and sequestration, terrestrial ecological value, and aquatic value in support of several NRDC programs, including their 30X30 campaign to protect 30% of nature in the nation by 2030. Click here to learn more about the 30×30 initiative.
Using CBI’s online modeling software called Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (or EEMS), team members were able to construct, review, and modify the models in a rigorous and highly transparent fashion from their individual remote locations. The resulting “living” models can then be used alone or together and in combination with other spatial data (e.g., existing protected areas) to add further context and insight using Data Basin. Data Basin and EEMS were effectively used to help guide NRDC’s important conservation mission.
CBI is working in collaboration with Oregon State University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Colorado Boulder on a project designed to help improve our understanding of post-fire community resilience. Central to the project will be the development of an RFID sensor network which will help support post-fire assessments of water infrastructure damage. These sensors will be deployed across a community’s freshwater pipeline network and will transmit data (e.g., temperature reached, pipeline material, exposure duration) that will help determine whether or not toxins have started leaching from the pipes into the freshwater supply. The current phase of the project focuses on Santa Rosa and Paradise in California where the 2017 Tubbs Fire and the 2018 Camp Fire caused damage to the water distribution systems, resulting in contaminated water within the system.
To help support this effort, CBI has developed a web application called the Wildfire Vulnerability Explorer, which can be accessed at https://wildfirevulnerability.eemsonline.org. This application allows users to explore a set of spatially explicit models developed for Santa Rosa and Paradise that identify areas likely to be vulnerable to water contamination exposure following a large-scale fire event. Estimates of vulnerability are based on three primary factors: the probability of water contamination, socioeconomic sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. The Wildfire Vulnerability Explorer brings this information together in an interactive map in order to help officials with both pre-fire planning and post-fire prioritization of recovery efforts – by identifying communities that are the most vulnerable to water contamination exposure, efforts can be taken to better plan for and direct resources to those areas.
Additional information about the project is available on the OSU project page at the link below:
Sensor Technology for Improved Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Fire Resilience
Funding for the project was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Photo courtesy of NASA (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144225/camp-fire-rages-in-california): Camp Fire in Paradise, California, which is one of the project study areas.
CBI recently worked with the Pacific Marine & Estuarine Fish Habitat Partnership (PMEP) to update the West Coast Estuaries Explorer, a tool designed to engage a broad range of users with detailed information about estuaries along the U.S. West Coast. The first version of this tool was developed in partnership with PMEP and the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative. The partnership between CBI and PMEP continues with support from NOAA and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC). The Estuaries Explorer got several performance and design updates to make it easier to use and more visually engaging. In addition to the latest available information for estuary boundaries and biological habitats, the Explorer now includes aerial images for each of the estuaries in Washington, Oregon, and California. Later this year, CBI and PMEP will incorporate additional information on the location of eelgrass habitat and areas of tidal wetland loss. PSMFC has taken over long-term hosting of this exciting tool.
Conservation Biology Institute is a partner in a new $1 million grant from a new interdisciplinary NSF program to foster building an “open knowledge network.” The inspiration for this type of network comes from Tim Berners-Lee’s (best known founder of the World-wide Web) vision for the “semantic web,” which applies tags with relationships to information on the Internet, allowing computers to do basic reasoning for improving search results and answering questions. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant all use these technologies.
Dr. John Gallo co-wrote the proposal and leads CBI’s participation in the team of 13 researchers and practitioners from 10 other institutions. The team is focused on improving access and contributions to tools for analyzing geographic data called spatial decision support systems. “The proliferation of online mapping technologies has greatly increased access to and utility of these kinds of tools, and a logical next step is increasing our ability to find the appropriate data and tools for your problem and link these together for more complex analyses,” says Principal Investigator Sean Gordon of Portland State University. Through engaging stakeholders in three applied case studies (the management of wildland fire, water quality, and biodiversity conservation), the interdisciplinary project team will develop and test participatory and automated methods for finding and sharing decision-relevant information using semantic web technologies.
The new NSF Convergence Accelerator program is named for its focus on bringing together interdisciplinary teams to address one of NSF’s 10 big ideas, specifically “Harnessing the Data Revolution“, also known as building an Open Knowledge Network. Eighteen other of these phase 1 grants were made, covering areas from molecular manufacturing to tracking potentially disruptive solar phenomena. The “accelerator” part comes from the short time frame. “The application required a 3-week turn around, which is very quick for a NSF grant,” Gordon said. “Our success was largely due to having formed the Spatial Decision Support Consortium, a professional networking group four years ago, so we had ideas and people ready to go.” Each phase 1 project is eligible to submit a phase 2 proposal for up to $5 million by next March, and the process will include giving a short “pitch” talk to a panel of experts and potential funders, much like a venture capital approach.
*Learn more about this ongoing project here.
The USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) works with farmers and landowners to implement conservation management practices on enrolled lands, with paid contracts ranging from 10 to 15 years in length. The CRP Grasslands practices target restoration of agricultural grassland systems by augmenting native vegetation for pollinators, providing habitat for grassland plants and animals, increasing biodiversity, reducing soil erosion, and improving water quality. The USDA’s CRP has been successful in improving the conservation value of millions of acres of farmlands; however, the program currently lacks spatially explicit information on land cover and vegetation within CRP-enrolled tracts.
In partnership with the USDA FSA program, the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) used a combination of remote sensing and machine learning algorithms deployed on the innovative cloud-computing platform, Google Earth Engine, to map grassland characteristics. We used a rich suite of enviro-climatic data, multiple sources of satellite imagery, and Random Forest modeling techniques to predict land cover for study areas in Washington, Colorado, and Kansas, where CRP Grasslands holdings are most prevalent. We used machine learning to create predictive maps of vegetation type by leveraging an extensive set of satellite-derived variables, environmental layers, and federal survey data (from BLM’s AIM and USDA NRCS’s NRI programs). Our initial investigation utilized Landsat 8 satellite data to model vegetation cover across the Washington study area and then scaled up to the Colorado-Kansas study area. The Washington study site was selected for further model enhancements and an in-depth comparison of Landsat 8, Sentinel-2, and MODIS satellite imagery, to evaluate differences in model development and performance among sensor types. We generated vegetation cover predictions for the year 2019 using Random Forest classification models. Classified outputs for the five vegetation cover models – annual grass, perennial grass, annual forb, perennial forb, and bare soil – were post-processed to exclude water and urban land cover and areas that were not relevant for mapping grasslands.
Mapped outputs showing vegetation percent cover predictions from our pilot project have been integrated into CBI’s CRP online decision support tool. This online tool offers functionality for managers and landowners to view, filter, compare and summarize geospatial information relevant for assessing CRP tracts in the study areas. You will need permission from USDA to use the tool, but it is available at https://crptool.org/. Anyone can view the design of the tool at USDA CRPtool.
You can read more details in the following publication.
Degagne, Rebecca; Pizzino, Declan; Friedrich, Hannah; Gough, Mike; Joseph, Gladwin; Strittholt, James; et al. (2022): Mapping Conservation Reserve Program Grasslands in Washington, Colorado, and Kansas with Remote Sensing and Machine Learning. figshare. Journal contribution. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19141853.v1
The Conservation Biology Institute and the Deschutes Trails Coalition (DTC) are in the process of developing a web-based system to assist the DTC in sustainably managing multi-use trails in Deschutes County. The collaborative process of creating a framework to support DTC’s decision making relies on modeling Environmental, Economic, Physical, and Social Sustainability of recreation activities and trails.
*Images provided by Danielle MacBain at the Deschutes Trails Coalition.
*The DTC Dashboard will include a form-based system to give users the ability to enter or modify information in the trails database.
*Mockup of the DTC Dashboard (Query Tools on the Manage Tab)
Wind energy developed in federal ocean waters off California’s coastline is poised to play an important role in diversifying the portfolio of resources that will help California achieve its 100% renewable and zero-carbon energy goals. Since 2016, the state has coordinated with other governmental partners, including the BOEM-California Renewable Energy Intergovernmental Task Force, to identify areas in federal waters off the state’s coast suitable for potential offshore wind energy development. To support this effort, the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) is using data from the California Offshore Wind Energy Gateway to produce a robust set of spatial models, designed to synthesize information to help stakeholders and decision-makers assess the suitability of offshore wind energy development in federal waters off the coast of California. These models, created using the Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS), provide a transparent and data-driven means for assessing a range of considerations at a given location, such as existing energy potential, deployment feasibility, ocean uses, fisheries, and marine life occurrence. Together, these models can be used to inform planning processes for offshore wind energy development to maximize renewable power generation and to avoid or minimize impacts to existing ocean uses and the environment.
The California Offshore Wind Energy Modeling Platform, powered by EEMS Online technology, provides an interface where stakeholders and decision-makers can interact with and explore the models and their data sources to help support decision-making processes.
The project’s technical report, executive summary, and presentation slides are available under “Project Files”, on the right side of this page. A California Energy Commission webinar recording with a project overview can be found here.
Conservation Biology Institute specializes in harnessing the power of spatial data for conservation planning and decision-making. We create tools in close collaboration with state agencies that help them achieve their missions. Recently we’ve had the opportunity to work with the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).
The CDFA Healthy Soils Program promotes the development of healthy soils on California’s farmlands and ranch lands by providing financial incentives to California growers and ranchers to implement agricultural management practices that sequester carbon, reduce atmospheric GHGs and improve soil health.
Conservation Biology Institute created the CDFA Healthy Soils Program tool, an online tool to streamline the submission process for proposals to the Healthy Soils Program. This tool, a custom module of RePlan, allows a grant recipient to locate and map proposed conservation practices, view and select from recommended species for planting, and conform with multiple project eligibility requirements. All project components are then summarized in a proposal report for upload to the CDFA Healthy Soils Program project submission website.
*Find the tool here: https://sitecheck.opr.ca.gov/
CBI developed the tool for the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) in coordination with the Department of Housing and Community Development. The tool was developed in partnership with OPR and is based on public input from partners through interviews, presentations, and workshops. Site Check is an innovative mapping tool that allows users to see if selected parcels may qualify for an existing streamlining option for housing development. The free tool allows users to map various CEQA definitions and filter parcels based on planning, transportation, and environmental criteria. Site Check is a good first step for developers and public agencies considering how California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) may apply to a housing project. Check out the free tool here Site Check.
This tool is focused on the CEQA provisions that cover a variety of housing types. The Legislature has also created specialized provisions for specific types of projects, including affordable housing, agricultural employee housing, and motel-to-supportive housing conversions.
CBI updated the UI for the tool in 2023 and updated data, including the regional below-average Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), 15% below regional average VMT, parcel data, Specific Plans. Check these layers out in the tool or download them from Data Basin.
If you have any questions about Site Check, please feel free to contact Brianne Masukawa, brianne.masukawa@opr.ca.gov.