LUF

Rapidly-expanding demand for recreational vehicle use of roads, trails and off-road areas on public lands is degrading resource values across much of the Western United States and competing with other recreational, agricultural, administrative and other activities.  Transportation planning processes are underway in many Bureau of Land Management and USDA Forest Service offices but generally supported with limited staff resources and funding.  BLM in particular has limited experience agency-wide in transportation planning, management and monitoring.  In this project, we are developing tools and methods to support technical analysis of resource conditions and encourage discussion about planning alternatives.  We focus in two areas:

• GIS-based decision support tools, including desktop and web-based systems to assist resource managers and others in assessing multiple uses and values, designing alternatives, and evaluating environmental consequences.
• Planning protocols, including methods, models and metrics for analysis of resource effects and for the organization of discussion among cooperators, stakeholders and the public.

Our overall goal is to build a public lands transportation program at the University of Colorado that supports BLM and USFS offices in more substantial analysis of resource effects and other consequences of transportation plans. This effort has four objectives: (1) assess methods and tools currently in use for transportation planning on public lands; (2) build prototype tools and protocols in specific areas, addressing defined planning needs; (3) demonstrate use of tools in local BLM and USFS planning processes; and (4) encourage institutional adoption of decision tools and protocols through training and other strategies. We attempt to address criticisms of tools and methods currently in use by BLM and USFS offices including technical difficulty, lack of transparency and analytical weakness. Where appropriate we emphasize web-based GIS, an emerging information system technology combining GIS, database software and programming languages in a distributed computing environment. Web applications have advantages such as opportunity for integration with the E-Planning system currently under development by BLM and USFS.

This research is organized through the Alternative Futures Lab, comprised of faculty and students at the University of Colorado interested in resource planning and related spatial models, planning support systems and web-based GIS. The lab operates as part of an interdisciplinary teaching and research program developed over the past three years through collaborations between the Departments of Planning and Design, Civil Engineering and Geography on the Denver and Boulder campuses of the University of Colorado. This project also relies on a sister lab, the Facility for Advanced Spatial Technology (FAST), which provides administrative staff and site licenses for advanced GIS, image processing, decision support and database management software. A primary research focus at the Alternative Futures Lab is design of decision support systems to assess environmental consequences of transportation plans. The lab is funded by the Colorado Department of Transportation, University of Colorado, National Center for Atmospheric Research and other sources. Other transportation research projects at the lab include (1) development of Colorado Environmental Geodatabase to support NEPA analysis of transportation investments; (2) development of a spatial decision support system for regional cumulative effects analysis of transportation investments; and (3) design of protocols for environmental justice assessment of transportation investments. Eight doctoral students, seven masters students and three full-time professional research assistants are currently supported through lab projects. Two doctoral dissertations have been generated through the lab. Collaborating faculty include Dr. Brian Muller (Planning and Design – Land Use and Environmental Planning); Dr. Lynn Johnson (Civil Engineering – Water Quality); Dr. John Wyckoff (Environmental Science – Ecology); and Dr Ray McCall (Planning and Design – Web-Based Applications).

Outcomes of the first project year (2006) include a review of recent transportation plans prepared by BLM and USFS, and planning tools that can be used to assist transportation planning efforts including EMDS and CommunityViz. We assessed needs in BLM and USFS planning methodology; gaps in the functionality of existing software; and opportunities for useful integration with existing packages. Based on this assessment, we designed the components of the Travel Management Toolkit including four primary modules: (1) Data Tool, which supports input of road, landscape and user preference data by stakeholders and agency staff; (2) Commenting Tool, which supports public or cooperator comments linked to maps; (3) Scenario Generator, which supports scenario design, management and versioning for multiple users; and (4) Impact Analysis Tool, which generates simple metrics for evaluation of scenarios. In addition, we reorganized and re-scripted existing modeling packages to support more sophisticated impact analysis in two areas related to transportation plans: (5) Landscape Suitability Model (overlay, core area and fragmentation assessment); and (6) Road Connectivity Model (road network assessment).

Working with the Sonoran Institute we also developed a cooperative agreement with the Prineville District Office of the BLM (Prineville, OR) to sponsor a demonstration site. We also established a secondary demonstration site with the Texas A&M University/Houston Area Research Consortium (Galveston, TX). We are cooperating with the Prineville site to customize tools and develop protocols; design transportation planning criteria; sponsor 1-2 meetings over the summer with county, state and federal cooperators; and use tools and protocols to assess transportation plans and scenarios in conjunction with these meetings. In addition, working with Prineville BLM staff and others we have defined five areas for additional development of methods and protocols.