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2006 Progress Report: Sustainable Sandhills: Developing a Plan for Regional Sustainability
EPA Grant Number: X832208 aka R832208Title: Sustainable Sandhills: Developing a Plan for Regional Sustainability
Investigators: Parsons, Jon , Brown, Jeff , Pulsipher, Susan
Institution: Sustainable Sandhills , North Carolina Department of Commerce , North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources
EPA Project Officer: Bauer, Diana
Project Period: July 25, 2005 through July 24, 2008
Project Period Covered by this Report: July 25, 2005 through July 24, 2006
Project Amount: $262,171
RFA: Collaborative Science & Technology Network for Sustainability (2004)
Research Category: Pollution Prevention/Sustainable Development
Description:
Objective:The project goal is to integrate sustainability planning into the day-to-day operations of the governments and communities in the Sandhills. This project will create a GIS model of land suitability to balance development, conservation, and cultural interests. The model is intended to enhance each local community’s ability to assess the implications of the land use priorities they develop.
The project area is a 2.5 million acre region in southeastern North Carolina including eight counties—Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, Richmond, and Scotland—as well as the military reservations at Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall.
Progress Summary:The project requires a unique collection of data because of the bounds of the ecosystem and because no other organization or political entity coincides with the eight county region. Thanks to a partnership with the Sandhills GIS Association and the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Division of Community Assistance, Sustainable Sandhills has access to a comprehensive Sandhills GIS database with annually updated and integrated GIS data sets.
Maps and statistics produced by the model will inform local and regional planning processes and the land use decisions that affect sustainability. The model will:
- Use data developed and maintained by regional partners as well as data readily available from state sources (NC One Map);
- Integrate GIS data layers that depict land cover, land use, natural resources, environmentally sensitive areas, protected areas, infrastructure, developed areas, socioeconomic characteristics, cultural and historic resources, and other themes relevant to a sustainable future;
- Integrate layers in ways that will be transparent and explainable;
- Incorporate criteria for selecting, rating, ranking, and weighting the layers generated by the planners, decision makers, and community representatives in the set of planning workshops;
- Enable users to test scenarios; and
- Produce output (maps and statistics) that will be easily accessible, meaningful, reliable, and simple enough to guide plans and decisions.
Milestone List
- August 1, 2005: Grant awarded. Project and grant administration begins.
- August 8, 2005: Jon Parsons, Executive Director, begins work.
- September 29, 2005: Initial meeting with 30 regional planning professionals, developers, and conservationists to explain the project and to solicit input on the factors to be included in analysis and modeling.
- February 2006: The project team developed initial model criteria based on the September 2005 meeting and the best available geospatial data to represent the concepts of suitability for five categories of land use:
- Residential development
- Commercial development
- Industrial development
- Natural land conservation
- Working farm and forest conservation
- March 2006: The project team built draft land suitability models in five categories to evaluate the geospatial data and draft criteria and to show concrete examples of how models can represent land suitability on a map.
- April 2006: The project team developed a 90 minute interactive presentation to solicit public input on the relative importance of assets and constraints for the five land use categories. The project team conducted a “dry run” of the workshop with the Sustainable Sandhills Board of Directors as the audience, and based on the resulting feedback, significantly altered the format of the presentation to be more understandable by a non-planning audience.
- May – October 2006: The project team used the presentation developed in April 2006 to complete a set of eight workshops – one in each of the eight Sandhills counties – to solicit public input on the relative importance of assets and constraints for the five land use categories. Comments from the first two workshops led to separating the Working Farm and Forest land use category into two separate categories – for a grand total of six separate land use categories. The project team also completed meetings with expert focus groups on all six categories during this period. The focus groups gave input and insight to the project teams on weights and detailed criteria for each of the land use categories.
- October 2006: Given the county perspectives on the most important sustainability factors and relative importance of assets and constraints along with the insights of the focus groups, the project team analyzed the information and edited the model criteria to prepare for modifications of the draft models.
- November 2006: The project team applied the new criteria to the draft datasets and produced model output for each of six land suitability models. The team then constructed a single model that integrated the set of models into a regional model that highlights the best locations for resource conservation, working farmland, working forests, residential development, commercial development, and industrial development.
Next Steps
- February 2007: The draft datasets will be updated to reflect the most current conditions.
- February 2007: The updated datasets will be run in the most current models and results will be prepared for early use by the five Sustainable Sandhills Teams (Air, Water, Land Use, Energy Use, and Materials Use) and the Fort Bragg Base Closure and Realignment Regional Task Force (BRAC-RTF).
- March – April 2007: The five Sustainable Sandhills Teams have prepared menus of adoptable “Sustainable Action Items” in each of their respective team focus areas. Each Team will review the model results and highlight the opportunities for Sustainable Development as well as targeting local governments, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for adoption of “menu items.”
- March – December 2007: BRAC-RTF is undertaking a “Comprehensive Growth Management Plan,” funded by the Office of Economic Adjustment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This Comprehensive Growth Management Plan is organized by activity area: Workforce, Education, Public Works Infrastructure, Housing, Transportation, Compatible Land Use, etc. Our project team’s early results and facilitation resources will be used to inform this important BRAC-RTF Plan.
- May 2007: another series of workshops will serve to present the model results to the leaders and citizens of the region (outside the scope of the BRAC-RTF planning effort) allowing for feedback/comment on the models, results, and methods of presentation.
ecosystem, indicators, habitat, sustainable development, public policy, decisionmaking, community-based, conservation, smart growth, collaboration, environmental footprint, economic development, quality of life, community planning, land suitability model, Geographic Area, Sustainable Industry/Business, Scientific Discipline, RFA, Technology for Sustainable Environment, Sustainable Environment, Environmental Monitoring, Urban and Regional Planning, State, education, North Carolina (NC), societal environmental cost, environmental sustainability, collaborative urban planning, green design, decision making, environmental education, land use, ecological design, GIS model, economic input output, sustainable urban redevelopment, resource recovery, sustainable urban environment,
Relevant Websites:
http://www.sustainablesandhills.org/ 
Progress and Final Reports:
Original Abstract