Author:
Adrienne Gemberling
Co-Authors:
Emily Mills, Margot Mays
Institution:
Chesapeake Conservancy
Abstract
If you are a landowner interested in installing conservation practices on your property, it can be daunting to figure out the full scope of options and who to contact to start this process. This challenge has been known to inhibit many individual property owners who own farms, woodlands, or residential property from pursuing conservation practices on their land, because the number of opportunities are overwhelming and a starting point is hard to identify.
Chesapeake Conservancy and American Farmland Trust have partnered to create a science-communication tool to summarize opportunities in an easy-to-digest printout for restoration practices specific to a landowner’s property. Restoration Reports.com is an easy-to-use online tool where a landowner can enter their address and management priorities, and receive a customized, understandable report of potential conservation and restoration practice options. Using high-resolution data and the latest geospatial technology, the Conservancy can tailor each report to the property level, and suggest appropriate points of contact for a landowner to get started. This presentation will discuss the challenge of reaching property owners in conservation and present a case study of how this tool was developed using GIS technology and applied to American Farmland Trust’s Women for the Land Initiative to reach women landowners and land managers. Restoration Reports is now available for landowners in nine Pennsylvania counties.