Ecosystem Services in GeoPlanner

[AndrewNeil1]

I am interested in using GeoPlanner to assess and plan for ecosystem services at a local scale (a very large urban university). 

When I say ecosystem services I am most interested in things such as Carbon Sequestration (or production), Amount of Tree Canopy/vegetation, Storm Water attenuation (runoff curve #), and Amount of Greenspace for recreation/cultural use. 

As we plan at our university we have somewhat "competing" interests.  We have sustainability goals which call for us to be carbon neutral (in the future) and for us to increase the ecosystem services our campus provides (among other goals).  But we also have plans to grow, develop, and build (a lot of times on existing greenspace).  I am really interested in providing our staff with a tool that would allow them to create scenarios for development and see the impacts on things like carbon, trees, and stormwater.  

I'm sure I can slowly develop all of this over time, but I was curious if anyone has already dabbled in this or if the GeoPlanner team has any plans for templates in this area of interest. Thoughts?   

Thanks for any help you can provide, 

Andrew Neil 

The OSU

[JohnWolf2]

Hi Andrew,

i am am interested in doing something quite similar. I was wondering if you ever received any insights or came up with a approach yourself.

John Wolf

university of Baltimore

[AndrewNeil1]

Hey John, 

I never got any responses to this.  I am still interested in this as a model to strategically plan greenspaces for ecosystem services but I have not had the time to invest in this effort.  I know there are some numbers out there in the literature for things like Carbon sequestration and stormwater runoff for different land uses (i.e. meadows vs. parking lots, etc.).  I think it would be a matter of combing through some literature, then creating the layers/scenarios in GeoPlanner, and assigning numbers to them.  

I honestly haven't had the time to dive into this or even use GeoPlanner to its potential but I would be happy to chat with you about this.  I'm not sure if you have seen but ESRI is also releasing ArcGIS Urban in the near future - I'm not sure if this may be more suited for this type of approach.  

Thanks, 

Andrew

The Ohio State University