Planning for Public Lands
Rapidly-expanding demand for recreational vehicle use of roads, trails and off-road areas on public lands is degrading resource values across much of the Western United States and competing with other recreational, agricultural, administrative and other activities. Transportation planning processes are underway in many Bureau of Land Management and USDA Forest Service offices but generally supported with limited staff resources and funding. BLM in particular has limited experience agency-wide in transportation planning, management and monitoring. In these projects, we are developing tools and methods to support technical analysis of resource conditions and encourage discussion about planning alternatives. We focus in two areas:
- GIS-based decision support tools, including desktop and web-based systems to assist resource managers and others in assessing multiple uses and values, designing alternatives, and evaluating environmental consequences.
- Planning protocols, including methods, models and metrics for analysis of resource effects and for the organization of discussion among cooperators, stakeholders and the public.
CLICK HERE for a description of the Travel Management Toolkit
Examples of our projects:
Western Oregon Plan Revision comment analysis