March 2010

Letter from the Editor

The important interaction between land use changes and the climate is the focus of An Assessment of Decision-Making Processes: The Feasibility of Incorporating Climate Change Information into Land Protection Planning. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released this more than 200-page draft report for peer review. It provides the results of a far-reaching study on the decision-making processes of 19 local, county, and state programs that protect land.

The review demonstrates that there are opportunities to include climate change information in the decision-making processes of land protection programs. Mechanisms for incorporating such information include: 1) developing decision-support tools for advisory committees; 2) providing a variety of methods to preserve lands; 3) educating elected officials who approve land protection decisions about climate change benefits; 4) engaging in strategic parcel selection; 5) coordinating with land use planning processes; and 6) developing tools for evaluating and prioritizing land parcels for protection. Incorporating climate change information in these decision-making processes can assist with maintaining land protection goals over time, such as preserving wildlife, habitat, and high water quality, as well as contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. (The report may be downloaded at: http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=210027#Download.)

Although most land protection programs today do not reference climate change as one of the criterion for parcel selection, this will certainly become more prevalent in the future. The authors recommend several steps to consider in the parcel selection process, including developing decision-support tools for advisory committees; promulgating different preservation models; cooperating with elected officials; engaging in strategic conservation; coordinating with land-use planning processes; and developing prototypes for evaluating and prioritizing land parcels for protection.

Lora A. Lucero, AICP
Editor