Why should the Galveston - Houston region plan for green infrastructure now?

The Galveston - Houston region, the sixth largest metroplex in the United States, is projected to grow to 9.5 million people by 2040, making the need for thoughtful decision making on conservation, local food production, water resources, and development very important. Without a strategic look at where to locate development and conservation, more than 985,000 acres of Houston’s critical natural assets are forecast to become developed between 2008 and 2035. 

Local leaders believe a comprehensive, unified approach is needed to ensure that the economic and ecological value of the region's natural assets are fully realized. They also believe these development and conservation decisions should be data driven, science-based, and address key sustainability issues.

The Galveston - Houston region's natural assets

The Greater Galveston - Houston region is blessed with abundant natural assets that help sustain long-term economic health. Galveston Bay is one of the most productive estuaries in the nation, with commercial and recreational fishing resources valued at over $3 billion annually.

The region also includes the Sam Houston National Forest, sections of the vast Pineywoods, and a series of bottomland hardwood forests that are the region’s lungs. Coastal prairies and rice farms are a part of the landscape of the southern edge of the region, with Brazos River, San Bernard River and Colorado River all emptying into the Gulf through a series of coastal wetlands and wildlife refuges. The City of Houston has over 100 miles of hiking and bike trails and 56,405 acres of parkland.

What is the green infrastructure plan?

At the request of local leaders, the Fund is working on green infrastructure planning and implementation initiative for the Galveston – Houston region. Our green infrastructure plan will:

• help balance conservation and development by finding the best opportunities to preserve and restore natural systems that mitigate downstream bayou and creek flooding;
• help minimize development of coastal prairies and marshes that absorb surge tide and provide flood abatement;
• help county and municipal leaders work toward channeling growth and reducing the land consumption footprint;
• estimate the economic value of ecosystem services such as flood abatement, carbon sequestration, and fish and wildlife habitat that are provided by the region’s wetlands, coastal prairie, upland forest, and bottomland forest. When these areas are developed, society incurs hidden costs—increased flooding, impaired water quality̬that are typically not accounted for in the marketplace;
• estimate the value of ecosystem services and propose a protected, interconnected resource network that takes advantage of the services provided by natural systems, thus saving counties millions of dollars to replace lost features and functions with water treatment plants and flood retention infrastructure
• outline a comprehensive implementation strategy that includes land acquisition opportunities, approaches to leverage key Federal and state conservation incentive programs, and new mechanisms for obtaining conservation and restoration capital.

How will the green infrastructure plan be developed?

With our unparalleled expertise in strategic conservation planning, we will help identify resource conservation, restoration and enhancement opportunities for the region. This is just one element of a comprehensive strategy to achieve the region’s sustainable development goals.

The Fund is working in collaboration with Houston Wilderness (a consortium of government agencies, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations) and the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) and with support from several local foundations.

We're working with H-GAC, as part of their Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant project, to engage the public in a thoughtful discussion of the future of the region within this larger effort on sustainability. There will be many opportunities for the public to participate and contribute on vision and goal setting session, scenario development and implementation strategies.

The green infrastructure plan will build on previous and ongoing effort’s including the Houston Wilderness 2010 report: A Strategy for Realizing the Economic Value of the Ecological Capital of the Greater Houston Region. The plan also will incorporate the Sam Houston Trail and Wilderness Preserve, a ribbon of undeveloped land encircling Houston and connecting existing parks, refuges, beaches and waterways. The plan will take advantage of the Center for Houston’s Future’s quality of life analysis of air quality, parks and trails, and trees; H-GAC’s 2040 long-range transportation plan, the Texas State Wildlife Action Plan, and dozens of other recent resource planning efforts.

Photo: Judy Ledbetter, iStockphoto.com (top); Galveston Bay / Army Corps of Engineers (middle); wetlands near Galveston / Propoganda Photography, Flickr

If you’ve ever studied a crowded supermarket shelf—Which brand? Size? Price?—you know the challenge of comparison shopping. So do conservationists. From state governments to local land trusts, cash-strapped conservationists must choose which of America’s special places to save. Today, with tight budgets, those choices are tougher than ever.

But we’ve developed a tool that can help. Our strategic conservation team, working with a resource economist, has crafted a computer model that enables conservationists to shop smart—by evaluating potential conservation projects for best dollar value.

“We all want the most bang for our buck, and conservation is no different,” says Will Allen, our director of strategic conservation. “Are you spending too much money on expensive projects, or are you getting real value? With public budgets so tight, government officials must be able to justify how they’re spending these dollars wisely.”

The new model “optimizes” conservation decisions. It works by turning raw data about conservation decisions—project costs, benefits (scored numerically), budget constraints—into a user-friendly spreadsheet yielding comparison shopping conclusions. Using the model, for example, a government agency can quickly compare the relative value of all possible projects and then make, and justify, an informed choice.

On the ground, the Baltimore County Agricultural Land Preservation Program in Maryland has already used our optimization model to save 22% more farmland than it would have otherwise over the past three years. Every year since 2007, Baltimore County has applied the optimization model to choose which agricultural lands to save. Optimization has helped the county protect an additional 680 acres of high-quality agricultural land, at a cost savings of roughly $5.4 million—a return on investment over three years of more than 60 to 1. In other words, for every $1 that Baltimore County spent using the optimization model, it has gained more than $60 in conservation benefits.

Wally Lippincott, Land Preservation Administrator in Baltimore County, is pleased with the results: "After trying for years to balance price with farm quality using rank based methods, we switched to optimization. In the first three years of using optimization, Baltimore County has been able to protect an additional 680 acres for the same amount of funds that would otherwise have been spent. This also translates into a savings of approximately $5.4 million."

Rob Hirsch likes that the program is easy to use: "Optimization has proven easier to administer and run than our old methods. During our rank-based days, we performed extra administrative and mathematical work in order to solicit discounts and award extra LESA points for discounting. With optimization, this is no longer required."

If you would like more information about our optimization computer modeling, please contact Will Allen at wallen@conservationfund.org.

Two hundred years ago, the “piney woods” of folk songs were a vast forest sweeping across 90 million acres from Virginia to Texas. The longleaf pine tree towered over the South, sheltering the white-top pitcher plant and the red-cockaded woodpecker in the open, park-like spaces beneath its branches. Settlers favored the pine’s fire-resistant wood for cabins, and the new national navy sailed under its solid timber and resinous pitch.

Today, the longleaf pine survives in fragmented patches across its former range. Less than three percent of the unique forest remains—still generating mulch for gardeners, a playground for nature seekers, and a barrier against devastating fires that may multiply as our climate changes. The shrinking stands of trees still contain one of the most diverse gatherings of animals and plants outside the tropical rainforest, including 29 threatened and endangered species.

In 2009, The Conservation Fund joined more than 20 nonprofits and government agencies in America’s Longleaf Initiative to rebuild this vibrant landscape across the Southeast. At the start of a 15-year plan to nearly triple the longleaf’s reach, from 3.4 million acres to 8 million acres, the Fund is providing answers to one critical question:

Where to begin?

Photo: Cliff, Flickr

Using the tools of 21st century mapmaking, the Fund’s team helped draft the first maps to show where substantial acres of longleaf pine survive, tracing the outlines of the forest’s historical range. The graphics reveal where the best bets for longleaf expansion may lie.

“If the plan is to add another 5 million acres of longleaf over the next 20 years, a good map helps us know where the money should get invested to do that 5 million acres’ worth of work,” says Will Allen, the Fund's Director of Strategic Conservation. “Until now, we only had a rough sense of where those investments should go.”

The maps give an overall idea of total acreage. Now, the Fund wants to know exactly where existing acres of longleaf are and whether they are good stands, Allen says. With detailed maps, conservationists can hone in on priority stands for saving, those that can be sustainably logged and other opportunities for economic investment.

With history in hand, Allen was hit by how little of the longleaf pine remains. “If every now and then you see stands of the longleaf pine, you don’t get a sense of how much we’ve lost.” But he strikes a hopeful note for the future. The Department of Defense provides a good model for preserving longleaf habitat, particularly around military installations in the Southeast. If other partners follow suit, longleaf habitat—and the entire region—will benefit.

Longleaf pine tree/Photo: John Kush

The Conservation Fund’s strategic conservation services use a green infrastructure planning approach—simultaneously focusing on the best lands to conserve and the best lands to accommodate development and human infrastructure—to help communities, state and federal agencies, and businesses balance environmental and economic goals through strategies that lead to smarter, sustainable land use.

Strategic conservation recognizes that limited resources are available to identify and protect the lands most suitable for conservation and that competing values, needs and opportunities must be evaluated to develop the most efficient and effective land conservation strategies.

Every community is unique; that's why we provide customized services. The Fund draws from its strategic conservation toolkit to help corporations, transportation agencies, military services, city and county elected officials, regional and watershed organizations, natural resource agencies and nonprofits design comprehensive and customized strategies that balance land protection and development.

In Focus: NiSource Implementation Plan

The Conservation Fund successfully completed a project supported by a Section 6 Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund grant entitled “Determining Mitigation Needs for NiSource Natural Gas Transmission Facilities—Implementation of the Multi-Species Habitat Conservation Plan (MSHCP).” As a complementary effort to NiSource’s development of a MSHCP, the Fund developed a geographic ecosystem-based decision support framework that helps find the best locations for mitigation for impacted federal listed species addressed by the MSHCP. This transparent, defensible decision-making process for selecting mitigation projects serves as a model for future strategic mitigation efforts to harmonize green and gray infrastructure. Learn more about the NiSource project.

The Fund produced a 15-page implementation plan that is available for download as a PDF.

The Fund’s Strategic Conservation services include:

• Strategic conservation guidance: Consultation to solve complex conservation planning questions and to design effective conservation strategies that foster collaboration and leverage available resources.
• GIS modeling and mapping: Compilation and synthesis of data to develop high-quality cartographic products and design conservation databases and tools that support decision making and resource allocation.
• Optimization Modeling: Our successful new tool allows conservation leaders to evaluate potential projects for the best dollar value. By turning data—project costs, benefits, budget constraints—into a user-friendly spreadsheet, our optimization program enables conservationists to “optimize” conservation decisions. Click here to read more.
• Green infrastructure plans: Development of comprehensive green infrastructure plans that identify community priorities and goals, inventory current community assets, map green space networks, develop strategies for implementation, and build capacity for communities to achieve their conservation visions.
• Decision support tool design and implementation: Integrate data, knowledge and analyses (e.g. ecosystem services, optimization, suitability analysis) to support land use decision making and prudent use of resources.
• Mitigation support: Identify and evaluate mitigation opportunities for agencies and business organizations from Habitat Conservation Plans, transportation improvement projects, military compatible- use buffer programs and pipeline/transmission/energy corridors.

Project Profiles:

Click here for a list of strategic conservation projects.