00:01Please join me in welcoming Will Rogers.

00:07Thanks Jack. Is a...yep, sounds like the mike's on.

00:11You know, a couple of people asked me if I'm related to "the" Will Rogers, the cowboy humorist.

00:16And you won't get rope tricks or cowboy humor out of me...

00:19...but I’m a firm subscriber in advice that he gave to a friend who once asked him, "What's the best investment I can make?"

00:27And his response was, "Buy land; they ain't makin' it anymore."

00:31And I've been working for an organization for the last 18 years that does just that...

00:37...and we work in the conservation real estate field in the marketplace and we have...

00:44...in our own way, been trying to move inland conservation away from being reactive into a more designed approach.

00:53And it's, this is a great opportunity for us to learn, here, from you all...

00:58...but also to thank Jack and his team and Esri for the partnership and the work they've done for us...

01:03...to help us bring GIS technology into helping communities design and plan for their future.

01:11This is a Gary Larson cartoon of one of the projects we did up in the San Juan Islands, on Turtleback Mountain.

01:17But emergency room land conservation is really what the conservation community has been doing for so long.

01:23The bulldozers show up, the For Sale sign goes on the property, the phone rings off the hook.

01:28Actually these days, the phone is ringing off the hook because developers can no longer hold onto their entitled property...

01:34...so it's a different situation for a moment.

01:37But for years the conservation community has really been reacting to threats and challenges...

01:43...particularly if your focus is on people, as ours is, because our mission, Land for People...

01:49...really puts a focus on communities and the importance of the relationship between people and place...

01:55...recognizing that if we have healthy human communities and a healthy relationship with nature...

02:00...that's ultimately going to be good for all species.

02:03Let me talk for a minute about TPL and where I come from, just so you have some...

02:08...a context for what I want to talk about in terms of how we're using GIS for the design process.

02:14We're a national conservation organization. We work across the country.

02:18As I said, we're really in conservation real estate. We face two principal challenges.

02:25You know, and Tom you set a very broad canvas.

02:29I'm going deep in one aspect of this, but a lot of what we're facing is absolutely related to what you were talking about.

02:36One challenge of course is population growth and disproportionate land use. Great quote there.

02:44This is in San Diego someplace.

02:46The second challenge for us is how we make our cities work better.

02:49How we make them green, vital...

02:51...and our metric is that every child be within a 10-minute walk of a park, garden, or a safe place to play.

02:58And if we can get our cities right, we think it'll take the pressure off the urbanizing fringe...

03:02...and change that landscape into this landscape.

03:06So those are the two threats that we deal with, both in the cities and beyond the city limits.

03:11The way we work is an organization, again in the marketplace.

03:14I'll talk more about the vision work because that's really the core of my presentation...

03:18...but we also help federal, state, local, municipal government raise money, 30 billion in the last six years...

03:27...for land conservation projects through initiative, mostly through voter initiatives.

03:31We've done about 4,000 deals. The numbers don't really matter.

03:34A quarter of an acre in an inner city makes an enormous difference in people's lives.

03:39And then we also do park design and development in a number of cities, engaging kids in participatory design.

03:44Because we work from inner city to wilderness, we've divided our program into several initiatives.

03:50Parks for People is urban, suburban.

03:52Working Lands, obviously family farms, ranches.

03:55Natural Lands, national parks, wilderness, the works there.

03:59Heritage Lands, cultural, historic sites that help us understand where we're coming from...

04:04...and hopefully we can remember more about, when we're figuring out where to go.

04:09And then water isn't just about scenic coastlines. It's also about water quality and protecting land to protect water.

04:16And that takes us anywhere from inner city gardens in Oakland...

04:19...to a before and after for a New York playground that the kids actually designed...

04:23...to what we call fitness zones and low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

04:28Our Working Lands gets us into working with the [National] Parks Service...

04:32...on J.C. Hyde's Farm within the city limits of Atlanta...

04:36...in southwestern Colorado, the Wet Mountain Valley, 8,000 acres of conservation easements with ranchers there...

04:43...south of Glacier National Park, a project we did with The Nature Conservancy...

04:47...300,000 acres purchased from Plum Creek timber...

04:51...critical lands for adaptation and wildlife corridors...

04:55...Palo Duro Canyon in Texas, the block where Martin Luther King grew up.

05:00We protected something like 13 homes now with the Park Service, as a national historic site.

05:05Returning 10,000 acres to the Nez Perce tribe in southeast Oregon.

05:09Their ancestral homelands, which they call "precious lands," which they were able to return to after more than a hundred years.

05:16And this 17,000 acres, about 30 miles outside of New York City...

05:20...provides something like 25 percent of New Jersey's drinking waters.

05:24So very much part of our land and water program.

05:27And the befores and afters are always compelling, certainly in urban areas, again a kid-designed playground.

05:35And every now and then we get a second bite at the land use apple.

05:37This is the Richfield Coliseum near the Cuyahoga, in the Cuyahoga Valley.

05:42It was headed for being a shopping mall.

05:45We got our hands on it, took it down, worked with the Parks Service, and now it's prairie.

05:50So every now and then you get a chance to bring something back...

05:53...and in this market right now, we're getting a lot of those opportunities, which is terrific.

05:57But let me talk about the vision piece, which is really our response to how you get out of this emergency room land conservation.

06:06We've done what we call vision projects. We've done about 50 of them to date.

06:12There're 15 in the pipeline. I think we're actively working on about 20 right now.

06:18Everything from working with townships in New England to 25 counties in the northern Midwest.

06:26We worked with the EPA on source-water protection green prints in a number of different states, and they're all sizes and shapes.

06:34But they're some commonalities that I want to talk to.

06:38When we're working in cities, it's more of a perspective issue.

06:42How do we make sure that cities have really wonderful park systems, have that 10-minute walk criteria built in?

06:49And that means, and the red is...

06:51...are essentially the areas where large populations of children are furthest from parks and open space.

06:57So we essentially do gap analysis. Here's a simpler, older map, by census tract, in the San Fernando Valley.

07:03The dark red are the places where there're a lot of low-income kids with no places to play.

07:09We call it a Parks Needs Analysis. I call it Endangered Children's Habitat.

07:13And so that's one way in which we use our planning and mapping and GIS...

07:17...to help people understand what they need to do to have healthier environments, for our species.

07:23When we're getting outside of the cities, it's a different challenge.

07:26And that's, this is really what I want to talk about.

07:28Where you have multiple needs, multiple opportunities for conservation that requires understanding on the one hand...

07:37...bringing science to bear, but also getting community involvement in a prioritization so that you can actually do something.

07:44And and so often the challenge isn't just doing the design, but it's moving beyond the design to action.

07:50And we've really found that GIS has helped us do that in a wonderful way.

07:56This is the process for conservation vision, for TPL's conservation vision.

08:02And I’m going to focus primarily on the second arrow there. Green printing and GIS analysis.

08:07But there're four different stages. And they're, you know, pretty straightforward.

08:11Got to bring the right people into the tent.

08:13You've got to then amass the information to help educate them and let them make an informed decision...

08:18...about what they want to see in the future, the design piece of it.

08:22And then we do a finance analysis, because we work in the marketplace to figure out where the funds might be...

08:28...to actually make this work, and then come up with a brief plan.

08:31The worst thing from our point of view, as being a pragmatic conservation organization...

08:35...is to develop a plan that gathers dust on the shelf.

08:38So this last step "and then getting to action" is absolutely critical for us.

08:42Walking through these briefly, again...

08:45...getting all the right people in the room is critical, but getting all the people in the room is a mistake.

08:50So you have to really figure out who you want to have there...

08:53...and really make sure that you have the key constituencies that are really going to make a difference...

08:57...and carry the weight to get you to consensus and get you to action.

09:02And that group will help you identify what we call our technical advisory teams.

09:06The people, whether they're hydrologists, or people who really understand biodiversity, who know where the data are...

09:12...who we gather together to help us actually do the research so that we can bring back to the stakeholders...

09:17...the maps and the information that they need to make informed decisions.

09:24The second stage, once we've got our community together, is doing the green print.

09:29And this is really where I want to focus, because it really is taking, bringing in science, bringing in information...

09:37...making it presentable, creating a platform, and creating a table where everyone can sit, understand...

09:43...and then come up with an informed decision and hopefully get to consensus.

09:46And if it's done right, it's a process that really...

09:49...that really allows you to deal with discord and disagreement and come out the other side with action.

09:55There're five pretty simple steps.

09:58Local goals. By that we mean water quality protection, ag [agricultural] land protection, scenic vistas, recreation.

10:06Those are the goals we're talking about...

10:08...and then we need to do on it on a parcel-by-parcel basis, we're, you know, we're action oriented.

10:13We're talking about buying land here.

10:15We've got to understand what each parcel means in terms of those local goals.

10:20When we map it, the red areas are the ones that have the highest resource value relative to that goal.

10:27So whether it's water quality, connections to parks, ag lands, transit-oriented development parks...

10:35...all of these can be mapped and then you have an opportunity to then see what it looks like.

10:42We can't do everything.

10:43There're never enough resources to protect all the land and all the resources that communities want to protect.

10:48And therefore, we've got to make decisions. We have to prioritize.

10:53And this system allows us to move from being reactive to being proactive and allows us to weight the different areas.

11:01I'm going to talk more about this in a minute as to how we do that, but that weighting is absolutely critical...

11:06...because you've got to come out the other side with a consensus around what the priorities are.

11:10Does drinking water matter more than scenic? And does that matter more than trails?

11:14And once you've done that you can create alternative scenarios, again using a very fluid mapping system...

11:19...which is enormously helpful, to, real time show people what it looks like.

11:24And then ultimately you've got to drive to consensus and come up with a design that people are willing to implement.

11:32One thing that we've really taken pride in is, because we work on a parcel-by-parcel basis...

11:39...this is a tool that allows TPL and our stakeholders to really dig in...

11:44...and understand what each, what the values are for each parcel.

11:48Whether it's, what is it's habitat value, what's it's water-quality value, etc.

11:53And so you can really drill down.

11:54We actually got a recognition from Esri a couple of years back for the quality of this particular tool.

12:01Not everyone gets to see parcel by parcel.

12:04We put it up on a Web site but it's protected because this can be a very political situation, obviously...

12:10...and when you're trying to buy these things, you don't want to get too much information out there.

12:14So once we've done the green print there're a lot of different ways that we can present that information.

12:18Strategy maps.

12:20Profile reports, the lower left-hand side.

12:22And then also, we put it up on the Web in many of these situations to create a, if you will, a virtual workplace...

12:28...where the stakeholders and others can actually go see what's there, understand it, share information...

12:33...and really inform themselves so that what we ultimately end up with in a consensus is an informed consensus.

12:40The other two steps of the vision problem is a process, as I said...

12:45...looking at the finance side, you know, what public, private money is available to carry out a plan.

12:50And then actually doing the plan and coming up with very realistic A to B to C implementable steps...

12:58...that our partner communities can take and we can help them take those steps if needs be.

13:04So how does this play out on the ground?

13:14Twelve towns got together. Their council of governments came to TPL along with a local land trust and said...

13:20..."Would you help us put together a regional plan? We don't think it's possible, but we'd like to try."

13:26And this is the first time that they'd done anything like this in the area...

13:30...but they thought that this vision process in the green print could actually help them get there.

13:36This is the, you know, the right-hand side shows the area that we were dealing with in Maine.

13:40The left-hand side really shows, essentially shows the process.

13:44A couple of things here we did somewhat differently.

13:47We always look at what data information planning has already been done.

13:51There's no point in reinventing the wheel, so we want to start with the best thinking that's already on the ground.

13:56Update that where necessary and really understand where the data and the analysis has already been done.

14:03In this one, we also, because it was 12 different communities...

14:05...did a public telephone survey so that we wouldn't go in blind to what the priorities were likely to be.

14:07Here's a simple case that we did in, well it turned out to be not quite so simple, in the Penobscot Valley.

14:11Although as it turns out, the priority areas, there are about a dozen of them that tend to come up...

14:16...and it certainly was the case here.

14:19And then once we'd done that, we put together a steering committee, the leadership group...

14:24...the council of governments, the local land trust...

14:27...the people we knew would stick with us 'til the end and had a vested interest in making this happen.

14:31They helped us pick the stakeholders. We got the stakeholders together.

14:35They helped us pick the technical advisory council.

14:38And then we were off and running and had stakeholder workshops and public listening sessions.

14:43And the first thing that we wanted to know is, What are the things you care about? What are the things that you care about?

14:50And what they came up with were six different conservation goals.

14:53Habitat, scenic values, working landscapes (farms), protecting water quality, public access, and recreation and trails.

15:03So those were the six areas that we were going to have to figure out how to prioritize in coming up with an eventual work plan.

15:12What was interesting for us of course, is that when people...

15:15...there was a broad diversity of how people looked at those different values...

15:19...and we came up with an interesting puzzle that we don't always see, which I will, which I'll speak to in a minute.

15:27We then, once we had those goals, we didn't disappear, but we went away for about three months...

15:32...and that's normally what it takes to assemble the data, put together the maps, so that we had a map showing...

15:38...by parcel-by-parcel showing how each parcel ranked for each one of those goals.

15:44So if you will, we had six different maps that somehow we would have to pull together...

15:48...to come up with an ultimate consensus-based design to move ahead.

15:52And once we were able to bring those maps back to the community...

15:58...we then had, and that's why I'm wearing this special little orange thing around my neck.

16:03We had a process where we used keypads, which we give to community members and stakeholders in these meetings...

16:10...and they're actually able to vote, real time, on their priorities.

16:15So if there are six different priority areas, they rank them, one to six.

16:19And that shows up as a summary graph and it also goes right into ArcGIS...

16:25...and creates a sample map that reflects those group weightings.

16:28So it's a wonderful opportunity for people to see what the implications are of what they want to see in the future.

16:35Either it's habitat or water quality, or whatever.

16:38There's also a very cool tool that's available. It's a swipe tool that allows you to have layers of scenarios.

16:43And you can take your mouse and just move it down the map...

16:46...and it peels away the top layer and then you see another scenario sitting underneath.

16:50And it's really helpful for communities as they try to wrestle with what the implications are for their priorities.

16:57In this instance, two different sets of priorities, rural and urban, and they really emerge distinctly...

17:02...and rather than try to get to the lowest common dominator or force a compromise, we said, "It doesn't make sense."

17:07In fact one of the stakeholders said, "Well why don't we just do it differently in the urban area than the rural area?" Aha!

17:13And as you can see, the rural folks cared more about habitat, scenic values, and ag land.

17:19And the folks in the city cared more about trails, recreation, and water quality, as well as habitat.

17:26And so, we ended up with a composite map and here are the six different maps.

17:31Again, red are the high resource, important high-resource lands.

17:38And the final result was a map, and I don't know if you can see it, but there's sort of a green central area...

17:43...that's kind of the urban corridor that has a different set of priorities, and therefore different values within that.

17:49And that was the consensus, going through this whole process, that people arrived at...

17:54...that allowed us to then move from there to the other stages of visioning...

17:57...the financial work, as well as the action plan.

18:01But this was the design that those 12 communities wanted to see for their landscape for the future.

18:08Way better than the normal reactive process.

18:11Now of course, being in the real estate side of things, we also looked at land availability, developability of property...

18:17...and a host of other things that didn't come into the normal run of those six different priorities.

18:23But it also allowed us to provide input on strategically what made the most sense, in terms of priorities.

18:31Once we'd done that, we put it up on an interacting mapping site...

18:35...so that the community was able to go in as well as the stakeholders, really see what was up there, understand...

18:41...change the weights around so that they could play with different sets of priorities.

18:47Password-protected access to parcel-by-parcel information for the people who needed that, but not for the general public.

18:53They were also able to use this site to print maps.

18:55Three of the towns are off and running right now, in terms of land conservation...

18:59...trying to take advantage of this down real estate market...

19:01...very much using the work that was done as part of this green printing process.

19:07We...and then we produced a final plan, as we do with every green print.

19:13If you want to see how this process works, my colleagues Breece Robertson and Brenda Faber...

19:19Breece runs our GIS operation for the Trust for Public Land. We're going to be doing workshops later on this afternoon.

19:25In fact, I'll probably ask them to come up during the Q&A period simply because I’m not a GIS expert.

19:31I'm passionate about what it can do for land conservation, but it's not my area of expertise.

19:38Let me close by saying that it's a wonderful challenge in that clearly we are bringing science to the table...

19:46...and using it to create designs that are really going to impact our futures.

19:51But when you're dealing with land for people conservation, it's not simply about biodiversity.

19:55It's not simply about hydrology. It's also about what people care about. It's about their relationship with place.

20:02It's about their relationship with the land, with nature, and with each other.

20:07And so, going into the future, things that we'd like to do to make sure that we're being more responsive in this...

20:13...in this GeoDesign process, is to have some kind of a wiki that allows us real time, or very quickly...

20:19...to get people's relationship with those places that doesn't necessarily come out when you sift through data...

20:25...because those relationships are very, very important to communities in terms of their sense of place.

20:31The other thing that we'd like to do, we think is absolutely critical to do...

20:34...is to insert climate layers of climate impacts into every green print that we do.

20:38It's so important to the extent that we're able to do it.

20:41And that's one of the challenges is to bring it down to a very local level for people to really understand...

20:47...the implications of climate change and what that is going to mean to their local landscape.

20:51Whether that's, you know, disappearing wetlands, or sea level rise, or rainfall, but the more we can do with that...

20:57...the more we can help to educate communities...

20:59...and the more they can take that into consideration when they're making their plans.

21:04So I’m going to stop there, and just thank you for all you're doing in your different areas.

21:10We're looking forward to learning from you over the next few [indecipherable].