Landscape Dynamics Monitoring
Changes in adjacent land use, particularly land conversion and development for urban / residential and commercial development, is a high priority network concern. Most GULN parks are, to some extent, interested in how and what is changing in terms of development and land use in properties surrounding and adjacent to parks. Our approach to monitoring change in land use is to consider posted and approved building permits and other formal planning and permitting instruments as being the “best available” predictors of near-future land development; An approved building permit generally predicates eventual construction of the permitted project. GULN, in collaboration with staff at Texas A&M University , is currently developing a protocol to provide early detection of planned and pending development on lands adjacent to network parks (see Chapter 3: Vital Signs and Chapter 5: Sampling Protocols). Fundamentally, this protocol will provide a prediction to the park of what will be developed, and where, in the near future.
The general methodology will be based on “exhaustively sampling” paper and electronic development and building permit databases for all public jurisdictions (counties, municipalities, water districts, utility districts, etc.) involved with permitting watershed alteration, development and construction on lands within a defined buffer adjacent to the boundary of each monitored park. Initially, sampling will focus on permits which have been approved and filed. Later development of this protocol will extend sampling to potentially include filed permit applications and project proposals, as additional tools to facilitate predicting near-future development around the park. Data and information to be collected and reported will include identification of project type, scope and size, proposed start and completion dates, and locations.
The general sampling design is a repetitive exhaustive sample (“total census”) of all available data in sampled databases on a short-interval or real-time sampling schedule. The sample frame and sample space are the buffer around the park boundary. Buffer size will be selected by the park, and may differ for different types of permits (e.g., a buffer for “residential and retail building” may be set to include all lands within 3.0 km of the administrative boundary, while a “utility and major transportation buffer” may extend out 15 or 20 km or more to capture highway and power plant development). Sampling frequency (revisit design) may be anything up to “continuous” electronic survey of available databases, as determined by factors such as access to databases and files granted by affected jurisdictions. It is likely that sampling will be “adaptive” in schedule, as different jurisdictions are likely to permit and support differing levels and rates of access to their data, and approval and posting of permits may have some time lag.
Link to Landscape Dynamics Intranet page (NPS only)