Baltimore County: Agricultural Preservation and Water Quality

Partners turn to The Conservation Fund to develop cutting-edge tools that support effective and efficient land use decision making.

Summary

The Conservation Fund completed the Baltimore County Land Preservation Model in 2006 and published an accompanying Water Quality Assessment in 2007. The Model supports effective and efficient decision making in the County’s agricultural land preservation program and incorporates an array of criteria for easement purchase selection, including soil quality, property location, water quality benefits, and environmental factors. A critical component of this effort was the completion of a Water Quality Assessment that incorporated a farm’s contribution to the maintenance or enhancement of water quality into the County’s decision making criteria.

Challenge

The Baltimore County Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management asked The Conservation Fund to collaborative with resource economist Dr. Kent Messer to support cost effective land conservation through the use of optimization and GIS mapping tools. The goal was to ensure getting the most “bang for the buck” with its easement purchase dollars and to incorporate public input into its parcel ranking system.

Solution

The Fund convened a Leadership Forum to obtain stakeholder input for decision making criteria and weights for the program’s project selection process. These were incorporated into mapping data that served as the basis for the development of agricultural easement purchase suitability models. The Fund developed a customized ArcGIS™ application and developed a parcel selection model in Excel™ using optimization and cost effective analysis techniques.

Results

The Land Preservation Model is being utilized by the Baltimore County Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management to assist in its decision making for purchasing agricultural easements. Scenarios from the most recent application round suggest that the County could save close to $1 million annually to obtain the same net benefit through utilizing optimization tools in its easement purchase decisions.

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