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Building a Decision Support Toolkit for Land Trust Conservation
Supporting Save the Redwoods League Vibrant Forest Plan
California
About this Project

Save the Redwoods League (SRL) approached NatureServe for help in developing a robust decision support toolkit (DST) focused around NatureServe VistaTM to inform their conservation decision making. SRL needed a DST that could support decisions ranging from regional prioritization of sites to site level decisions focusing on whether to conserve or restore sites to meet their overall objectives for maximizing old growth redwood forests while supporting ecosystem biodiversity.  The DST is comprised of Vista as the main integration tool, modeling tools for species distributions and habitat connectivity, and Marxan for site prioritization (run through the convenient Marxan wizard in Vista. The assessment considered current and near term threats in Vista's scenario-based cumulative effects assessment and prioritized areas based on the Marxan output. NatureServe worked closely with SRL to scope the project needs, identify and incorporate GIS data and expert knowledge, populate the DST, run models and assessments, and deliver the DST with training and support for their direct use.